Screw it. This post will end with a picture I took this weekend of someone that I may or may not either like and/or be related to. This thread will suck a lot if pictures of such people never get posted in it.
But first a strobist style step by step walk through of what I did to make the picture. Think photography related FANalysis, and skip to the end as appropriate.
A request was made to me to produce a KSTATE0 picture of a tiny EMAW. What that person wants, that person gets. I decided that I would use a powercat flag as the backdrop. I didn't want to just expose the tiny EMAW and the flag with the same light, because that would produce a flat, boring picture, and I wanted to do something a little more exciting (no offense auto-blasters!). In order to get some working distance between the background and the subject, I selected a 105 mm lens (I shoot with a Nikon D300, so this lens has an angle of view equivalent to a 158mm lens on a FF camera).
I clamp the flag between a couple of light stands, and then place my camera on a tripod, and frame the powercat how I'm going to want it. I select a flash friendly f5.6 at ISO 400 because my key light is going to be an SB800 into a large modifier, and I don't want to have to fire that at full power in order to reduce cycle time between pops. From there I select a shutter speed of something like 1/40. I would like to get a little more ambient for fill, but don't want my shutter speed any slower than that. I take an exposure to check how things are going so far.
Yup, dark. Well, I'm not going to get any ambient fill, but on the bright side, I won't have to worry about the ambient polluting the color temperature.
I want to focus the light on the powercat, so I put an 8" snoot on an SB800, zoom the flash its maximum amount, and set it at 1/64 power, figuring that I won't need much light to get the exposure that I want, and knowing that I'm going to get a fair amount of spill from my key light later on. So, what does it look like?
Oops, looks like I missed. I do like how rapidly the light rolls off though, so I just need to change my aim a little.
Much better. Of course when I put my subject in I'm not going to be focused on the flag, so let's see what the background is going to look like with a stand-in in place.
Not bad. So now it's time to figure out the key. Here I'm going to use a second SB800 with a 1/4 CTO under its diffusor dome bounced into an obnoxiously huge 60" softlighter ii. The gel will add a little warmth to the EMAW. I'm going to count on wrap-around from my big modifier to alleviate the need for fill. Which is good, because I'm out of light stands, so I won't be able to use a reflector. I guess at 1/4 power, and this is what I get.
Not too much spill onto the background. The bear's nose is a little hot, but the little EMAW won't be that white, so I'm not too worried.
Here are a couple of pictures I took with my phone of the set-up:
The only thing left to do is to bring in the little EMAW, and an assistant to make sure that he doesn't fall off those two boxes that I'm using as a posing stool, and take a fantastic picture.
