Her website is or just hit her up directly at for more info. If you're in the Minnesota area, right now I can't think of a better deal (better than me!) if you're itching to get a shoot done. From time to time, she accepts donation-based ( name your price!) photoshoots as she is building up her business. And thanks to my trusty lighting assistant, Alexis Miller!īy the way, I mentioned that Nana was also a photographer (portraits/lifestyle/landscapes).

If you want to create the best possible lighting for portrait shots, using a gridded softbox is recommended. While standard softbox lighting can be adjusted, a gridded softbox allows you to have more options available. Thanks to Nana for showing up looking great, for the fun time shooting, and of course for choosing to shoot with me. Gridded softboxes are particularly useful to use if you are looking to maximize the amount of control you have over the lighting produced by a softbox. The EM5/Nocticron combo was able to lock focus, albeit not as snappily but impressive nonetheless (see how it focused in the dark in my first impression blog entry). So you get a variety of lighting contrast options that give you better even lighting. The inner and outer two-layer diffuser, the black honeycomb mesh is also removable. Another random thought is that this thing focused very quickly and accurately on my EM-5-hooray for fast/accurate focus at f/1.2! :) In the studio room shots (with rivet-texture on the wall), the room had all the lights turned off-almost completely black minus ambient light from the lone door. Godox 120cm Detachable Grid Octagon Softbox in Bowens Mount Design for Weddings, Portraits, Advertising and Various Studio Photography etc. Of course, the results shown here are much better than what I could describe:Īll shots were at f/1.2 aperture ( of course, I didn't friggin' spend $1600 to NOT use it at f/1.2, dummy!!). Out-of-focus areas were very, very nice (although its closest rival in terms of focal length, the Olympus 45mm/1.8, was no slouch in that department). If you shoot jpeg, you can feel good not needing to do any additional post-processing with this lens (assuming you did everything right in-camera). Although I shoot RAW + jpeg, the jpegs themselves had quite the bite to them in regards to contrast/sharpness. I was also looking forward to this shoot for another reason: it was the first time I would actually put my fancy (then) new Panasonic-Leica 42.5mm/1.2 Nocticron lens to the test in an actual client situation (as opposed to my initial testing for fun and curiosity, seen here). So we booked a date to shoot at the ever-so-friendly Vault Fitness in Eden Prairie, MN. Also a photographer (which is very flattering when another photographer wants you to photograph them!), Nana had been working hard to get into phenomenal shape, and had asked me to document her conditioning and hard work. But I am back!Ī few months ago I had another physique photoshoot booking, this time with competitor Nana. Except this time those excuses have been the most extreme since I started up this blog. This lapse seems to have been my worst with the usual excuses: work, deadlines, work, lack of sleep, traveling (for work of course), and more work. And of course the contrast has been adjusted in post to make the shadow deeper.Sorry about the lack of updating. Looks like and extra softbox, maybe a small octa, was used to get the face lighting. Not to mention, that the fresnel should still produce a dark shadow on Natalie's hands and other objects, but this only has a deep shadow on her throught, and a very broad dithered shadow. But for still photography, the scrim makes the light harder to control. I doubt it's a fresnel through a scrim, but it could be- honestly, the technique is more common in video b/c they want the extra light spill. Note that you'll have to play w/ the angle and distance of the light to get the fall off like you like it. See the 'Chiaroscuro With One Light' tutorial, in the subforum of 'Lighting' -> Lighting Themes It's a natural occrance b/c of the inverse square law of lighting, and the bg light being much closer to one section than another. The gradient light is much simpiler than the above.