Today I had a test shoot with the Elinchrom Quadra portable lighting kit that we had the workshop on with Rick Kelly and Simon Weldon a few weeks a go. I set it up in the atrium of the Richard Steinitz building at the university. I set it up in front of a huge open window that was letting in a lot of natural light, I waited for people to pass by and asked if they would mind if I was to take a portrait of them. I faced some issues with the kit, my images to start with were too unexposed so I adjusting the power of the lighting to which it then became to over exposed on one side. The issue here was that with this kit the lights aren’t adjustable separately unlike the lights you would use in a studio. If you were to adjust the lights it would adjust both. This is something that was mentioned in the workshop and to solve this would be to move the lights around, so this I tried and it worked.
Another issue I faced was the time of day, and the natural light coming from outside which was also effected by the weather. I tested this kit out on a very miserable, dull and rainy day and it was late on in the afternoon there fore it was beginning to get dark anyway. This effected the lighting of the background, the background became dull and dark. All though this helped my voluntary models stand out from the background this wouldn’t be an ideal situation if I needed the background to be exposed and in view. In this case I could have used one light on the model and one light on the background, however I didn’t have chance to explore this as there was no more volunteers about.
Despite the issues that came up the lighting test was a good experience and a good test. The lighting helped highlight all the details of the models face and clothing which is a key factor in Fashion photography. It helped raise the quality of the image and is definitely a tool that I will use again when shooting.
Lisa Castle Photographer 