Portrait advice needed

Edser

Hi All,

I'd like to try a B&W portrait where only the person is highlighted against a black background.

Some examples of what I'm looking at can be seen here :

http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/PMO3871.php
http://www.worldofstock.com/closeups/PCH1462.php

I was thinking of:

dark room
dark background
dark clothing
light source

Is there anything special I should do, any specific camera settings, or does anyone have any tips for this type of shot?

Is there much post processing?

I've a Canon 20D and I'm a bit of a novice

Thanks
Ed

ShakeyBlakey

Hi
the effect your looking for is called "low key lighting", if you google "low key lighting techniques", you'll get a lot of info on the set-ups etc.
The first shot uses only one light source, off camera!, so u'll need a sync cord or hot shoe adapter to fire the flash.
The second shot either has 2 light sources or uses a reflector, hard to tell.?
But anyway check out the technique pages, get an idea of what you want and what works best for you, then just experiment!, you'll have it sussed in no time.
EDIT/ADD ON:
Just a little to add to the above, you can actually get this these shots without needing to buy a black cloth background, or anything else too expensive, as elven says below, in studio's they use snoots and barn doors to direct the light, you dont want your light spreading all over the place, so cut some matt black cardboard and sellotape it to your flash to direct it, use black pvc tape(electrical) to prevent light leakage from your diy accessories.
In a darkened room if you keep your subject as far away from the background as possible, direct your light on your subject only, use low iso, high f/stop, fastest flash sync speed, strong manual flash, you should get a shot fairly close to what you want, but you'll need to try different flash strenghts, a few test shots adjusting to suit. then in processing, just make sure your blacks are black.
Best of luck!

elven

If you want to highlight only the person and not the background, you'll have to set something up to direct the light, and angle it away from the background. You get snoots for both studio lights and also for flashes, as far as i know but that's the extent of my knowledge - I've always done stuff with household lights, various bits of foam, material, and black & white card that I've had lying about!

If you want a black background that won't show up so easily, the best material is velvet (or fake velvet even) so that it sort of sucks up the light, rather than reflecting it and looking grey - like the first example you posted.

Remember, if you've got tons of black in the shot your camera is going to want to expose it as grey so you'll have to spot meter on the subject, or compensate manually.

Post processing would generally come into play to make sure that your blacks are really black and maybe to pull out some details and create more contrast.

Just my two waffling cents worth...

Edser

Thanks for your help.