High-Key

[FootNote]

In my Epic fail thread (Dead Link Removed) I had some problems with my light meter. The problems created completly blown out images, but close to high-key. After looking at the images (well one in particular) high-key is kind of growing on me.

So if given in a studio environment:
One - 4x5 camera
Several - Sheets of Delta 100
Several - Sheets of HP5(400)
Two - Hot lights
One - Paper backdrop
One - Nikon F5 acting as the light meter.

How would you create a high-key image with all the detail in the face intact.

OK it has now been explained to me that high-key is not over exposure but "High key relates to environment i.e. a blonde sitting on a white couch in a white room-exposed properly! "

So i will rephrase my question too:

How can i create a image like this, but keep the details of his face? (beard, skin, poars) And what is a image like this called, if not high-key?

 

[Mick Fagan]

I'll ask you a question or two, what length lens were you using?

Did you take into account the possible bellows factor you may have needed because of the close focusing you look like you have subjected the camera too?

Are you going to print the films onto paper in a darkroom or do something else with them?

Your exposure time with tungsten lights (I assume that is what they were) seems reasonable to me.

If you wish to have detail in the face like the pores of the skin, plus detail in hair of that colour, then you will have to adjust your lighting ratio somewhat.

Something simple like a piece of diffusion material will lower the overall contrast of your lighting. Think of a bright sunny day as you current lighting set-up. Then by the simple addition of a diffuser in front of your lights you will have the same effect as a cloudy bright day, which still retains highlight twinkles in the eyes, but allows the darker parts of your subject to still be retained in a printable form, on your negative.

A diffuser can be something as simple as a worn thin bed sheet held in front of the light. Moving the diffuser closer or further away from the light source, will dramatically change your lighting. This is a very simple, cheap, but effective tool.

If you don't have detail in your negative that you wish to have, especially if it is a highlight detail like skin pores, then you will need to increase your exposure to get that detail.

Some food for thought.

Mick.

 

[markbarendt]

Four things I would do in setting up with a featureless white backgound, like in your sample shot:

1-As much physical separation as you can between subject and background. 8, 10, 12, even 15 feet.
2-Set exposure for the face using spot metering on the face.
3-Light your background for over exposure, i.e. pure white is the target
4-Take your F5 and get behind your subject, without shadowing the subject and verify that the light bouncing back toward the camera at the subject is less than what you are setting your big camera at. This keeps you from getting a halo effect.

The other scenario you pose is simply a normal exposure shot where you put the subject and background in their proper "zone". i.e. the Blonde in 6, everthing else in say 7, & 8. You might lean toward overexposure a bit for effect.

In Low key the Blond is still in 6 or maybe even 5 or 4 for effect, the rest would be in 4, 3, 2, even 1

 

[Ed Sukach]

This *IS* "high key". I think it is more of a question of, "How strongly `high-key' do you want it to be?"

One can either over-expose ... strike that ... use more exposure than considered "normal", resulting in a denser-than-normal negative, or less exposure in printing.

Adjusting these will increase / decrease the amount of detail contained in the print.

 

[doughowk]

A naive question: would blue filter be of any benefit in studio setting? It seems to work well with environmental portraits for increasing facial detail.

 

[raucousimages]

Properly expose the face and then overexpose the background by at least two stops.
Big +1 on moving the subject 12-15 ft. from the background to let the background lights expose the background not the subject.
A lot of books diagram hi key lighting set ups. Try a library or browse a bookstore. Good luck and keep at it, I found hi key harder than low key.

 

[nemo999]

Your problem is NOT one of lighting - your picture looks the way it does because it is extremely overexposed. Varying the lighting on the subject (which at present looks like very flat lighting - two softboxes?) will change the modeling in the face If you're using a Nikon F5 to determine exposure, make sure the lens has roughly the same angle of view as the one on your view camera, meter off a gray card if possible. If there is no other possibility, meter the subject's skin and give one stop more exposure.

The second question is then how you want to treat the background. If you don't light the background separately, it will be lit only by the spill from the key and fill lights on the subject and will print a shade of gray, the exact shade depending on how far the background is behind the subject. If you want a background which is literally featureless (paper base white), this is easy to get by simply lighting the background more brightly than the subject (3 stops or more), but this look is not attractive (at least not to me). If you want a look to your pictures like David Bailey, Richard Avedon, etc. you really need to light the background quite carefully and evenly at 1 stop brighter than the subject (easiest way is a flood-type light either side of the background, same lighting as you would use for copying), which should mean that the background prints at a very light off-white, while there is full detail in the subject's face.

 

[CBG]

High key is a pretty broad topic. It ranges from just very light subject matter - the blonde against the white background, to some level of generous exposure to push the brightness, to whatever manipulations needed to play with the idea of a theme of general brightness.

C

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

In my opinion this is not high-key. It is my understanding that a high-key image has no tones below middle gray. This image clearly has blacks in it. It is high contrast.
With the aid of studio lights, you can light your subject so that there are no shadows on the face. Give generous exposure, and then reduce development slightly. Or maybe normal development will suffice. You will have to experiment. Then control the exposure time and filtration (assuming you are using VC paper) when printing so that you don't get any tones below middle gray...or zone V.