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reverse engineering an image (3) – contest result & feedback

12 Comments

wedding portraits with multiple light sources

We have a winner for the contest we had last week, where we had to reverse-engineer the lighting in a photograph. I’ll be contacting the winner who will shortly receive a $50 B&H gift voucher. Thank you everyone for vigorously participating!

Here is Josh Lynn to explain what he did for the lighting in the contest image, of which the photo above is the wider shot. This photo reveals more of the one light source. …

So, after careful review of all the submissions I have come to the conclusion that Post #32 by Susana Barzola is the winner! No one was 100% correct and a number of you were close, of which Susana were the closest in my estimation.

A quick breakdown of the image. Or the story behind it.

While as photographers we are there to document the key players, the emotion and events as they happen. For my company its extremely important that I create these kind of images for my client. This is what I am known for and the focal point of what I show.

As we walked out of the church I took a quick photo of the B/G with the flower girl and ring bearer. I then noticed the Sun was just dropping below the Horizon and called out to Tim (my assistant) who was across the parking lot loading gear. He drove over to me and I instructed him to park with the highbeams pointed at the B/G . A quick request of the limo driver to turn his headlights on and you have your ambient lighting.
For Speed and consistency I work in manual modes with the exception of WB.. Strobes are manual, shutter/fstop always manual

I could have taken the photo with just the 3 lights (limo, sun, my car) and it would have been ok… but I prefer to add some lights to add color and contrast.

Light source
# 1- This is of course the setting sun. While it had JUST set the light level is still pretty high. So I knew I would need a decent shutter speed to compensate for it.

#2 – I didn’t want them to be fully lit, however I wanted to fill the shadows a touch. This light source threw a number of you off but most recognized it was tungsten based. Its a Lowell Id Video light targeted on the couples faces

#3 – This is the tricky one, as I already mentioned this is my own car pulled up JUST out of frame. The first photo I took I saw my fender (attached to this email) so I had to recompose just a bit, Many of you said I used a reflector to reflect the Rolls headlights back at the couple. And this isn’t such a bad idea however it wouldn’t produce the same level of light. My car is just being used to fill some shadows and add some color to the image.

#4 – yes this is of course the Rolls headlights. By asking the limo driver to turn them on, it added life to the image. Whenever you are doing car photos, you want the lights on.

#5 – Take a small speedlight, on a lightstand about chest level, point it up at them at a low power (or if the ambient is higher then a high power) and this is what you get. I personally use Radio Poppers but this could have been done with Pocket Wizards as well.

No Gels were used.. No modifiers.. Just recklessly placed lights.

NOW, IF the look I wanted was reversed … say I wanted to see the couple clearly, I would have reversed lights 2 & 5. (Forgetting the sun … I can’t control that so I just live with what I am given on that one.)

My Settings
Lens (mm): 105
ISO: 800
Aperture: 6.3
Shutter: 1/250
Exp. Comp.: 0.0
Flash Comp.:
Program: Manual
Focus Mode: AF-S
White Bal.: AUTO

Josh Lynn

12 Comments, Add Your Own

  1. Man… I was a mile and a half off (and then some). Josh is your car one of them Lincoln SUV with a “continuous” headlamp? Just curious… because at first I thought of that being #3…

    :-)

    Cheers!

    Bogdan

    Reply

  2. Now that it’s over, I want to ask, what’s with people that can look at a cropped photo w/o blur and name:

    ISO
    shutter speed
    aperture
    power settings of various lights (oh that must be at 1/2 power – 1/2 of WHAT? can you tell the brand and make of a light by the output?)
    WB (ok this is the only one that maybe in certain settings you could guess)

    Or am I missing something?

    Reply

  3. V .. it’s a way of challenging everyone’s analytical prowess a bit. There is a lot to be gleaned from looking at photos and trying to figure out what they did.

    This process is very much in line with a previous article that I posted here – re shutter speeds, aperture, ISO settings – where I wanted to guide a lot of the questions away from the specific settings. Instead of asking for the aperture, and then asking why I used f3.5 … I wanted to get the idea over that much of this can be surmised from carefully considering a photograph.

    For example, you don’t need a high-resolution image (although one was provided as a click-through link), to figure out that even though the light is low, the sky is still quite bright. This implies a higher shutter speed than one might think from just the low light levels. But the higher shutter speed wouldn’t be higher than max sync speed. It isn’t that bright. So I would’ve guessed a shutter speed around 1/125 – 1/250 … somewhere there. Knowing that Josh approaches this stuff much like I do, I would’ve instantly thought of max sync speed actually. And that’s where he was in fact.

    1/2 power of what? A speedlight. It is usually a speedlight and not a larger flash unit like an Alien Bee or Profoto. Since we all have speedlights, it isn’t too much of a stretch to be able to guess that we might not be at full power, but some fraction of it.

    So, approach this like a bit of detective work … and there some things which are easily and accurately figured out … and some we have to take an educated guess. And then match it to the final result. I do believe that many readers will pick up some ideas and useful tidbits.

    In fact, looking at the previous time we reverse-engineered image from Josh, the discussion led to me posting a longer article afterwards on what happens with high-speed flash sync. With the replies to Josh’s image then, I saw that many didn’t have a clear idea of what really happens with HSS, so I tried to put a few things right. From that previous reverse-engineering effort, came something with additional benefit for everyone.

    Ultimately, the contest was there as a fun thing to do and as something to learn from. I think it served its purpose well.

    Neil vN

    Reply

  4. Didn’t win (#17) but was proud to see that I was one of only three people who guessed a second car headlights in the picture. My main mistake was the video light that I thought was a flash. It was fun.

    Reply

  5. Motti, I think you were 2nd place!

    V – As Neil went into greater detail I am going to make it simple..

    So, When I had pocket wizards say I am setting up a scene and I ask my assistant to pull out a speed light.. His first question would be “what power do you want it set at?”

    Manual power levels are just a guess initially but after doing it awhile you have a decent starting point depending on what is going on.

    Reply

  6. I would have thought that there would be more of light spilling about from lamps on Josh’ vehicle; not to mention Rolls Royce bumper is mighty dark. So was the light from source 3 appears as it does in limited area due to (relatively) high shutter speed?

    Reply

  8. some of the info that was required for the reverse engineering the photo are missing from the answer like; shutter speed, aperture, iso setting. This might be picky, but they are essential to duplicating the picture. Congratulations to the winner!

    Reply

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