I setup a quick and dirty home studio in my office last night. I’ve been wanting to take a quick shot of myself for some business social media sites. This was a two light setup with one umbrella and one diffused flash mounted above the camera. I was then holding a silver reflector to bounce some of that light up under my face to balance everything out.
Behind me was just a doubled thick black bed sheet. The speedlite and umbrella were positioned camera right just behind it. The speedlite that was mounted above the camera was triggering the other via canon’s wireless flash system. The flash was set to use E-TTL metering and set at FEC of -2/3.
Now you might ask how someone might trigger the camera when your taking a self portrait? Canon’s own EOS Utility software to the rescue! This neat little piece of software allows you to essentially control every aspect of your camera without even laying a hand on it. You just turn it on and hook it up to your pc with a usb cable and the software does the rest. Earlier, I mentioned that I set this whole rig up in my office.. now this is where that matters. I have my photo processing pc setup and i just used my mouse with my right hand to trigger the camera. You can even turn the wireless on and off through the speedlite in the software!
Another benefit to the software is you can preview each image in a much larger window than the camera’s lcd window. This means that I could eyeball each image as I take it and make sure the lighting is correct and that I’m centered in the frame.
Below shows the camera mounted on the tripod with the flash connected. Then next to it is shows the flash on the light stand and umbrella.
And here is the final prodcut. The image was taken when my Canon 7D and my trusty 50mm f1.8. The exif info is 1/80sec f8 @ 50mm ISO100.
