Workshop: Mixed tungsten (Paterson) & daylight

Todays workshop was very useful to me this week as I plan on shooting documentary photography in the mix of tungsten and daylight. It was ideal to see how I can achieve this in the studio as well as within the natural setting.

The image above is just a rough guide of our set up. The light stayed to the right side of the model throughout the workshop except we tried to bounce the light off a polyboard to decrease the light slightly and moved it back and forth so that it lit the background only. The black polyboard to the rigt of this image was moved after we realised it was blocking ambient light and the white card was used to block the tungsten light from the models face.

To begin with we sorted the obvious out; model, backdrop, composition, etc. and made sure we were set to start shooting using ambient light. 

The ambient light alone looked flat and it was harder to flag off any shadows as it blocked out the ambient light that we wanted. From the light reading we received an ISO of 800, f/2.8 and shutter speed 15. Working in manual focus the person on the camera found it difficult to focus the subject therefore we concentrated on that towards the end of our best images as we were concentrating on the lighting more importantly. 

We then introduced a Paterson light to the right side of the model with a soft box, bouncing light onto the backdrop and leaving the ambient light to fill in the model creating a split. We noticed that it was taking away the grey from the backdrop and casting too much light onto the model, so we flagged off the light bouncing onto the model and added a cooling gel. 

The difference was very obvious and as a group decided we preferred the cooler tones rather than warm. From just one light it managed to balance out across the backdrop which worked really well. The light brought the ISO down to 400.

During the workshop we kept getting a shadow which was noticeable in the warmer tones but not so much in the cooler tones. It was difficult to flag this off as it then blocked off some of the ambient light. 

Overall I found this workshop very helpful and has made me consider mixed lighting in a more natural setting rather than studio. For examples lamps, how the light from those would bounce onto the subject.