Strobes for 4x5 portraiture

[36cm2]

I have the opportunity to purchase a Speedtron 2401A powerpack and a couple of 102 flash heads for what seems to be a decent price. My understanding is that you need quite a bit of light to shoot studio portraits using a 4x5. I know almost nothing about strobes. Would this setup be powerful enough? I would be shooting in a small home studio with a 4x5 field camera, Fujinon 240A lens, mainly head and shoulders shots, 95% black and white. Hoping to shoot at apertures with ample depth of field for full head focus. I'm not sure what that would be, maybe F/22 - F/32?

 

[DanielStone]

DOF can be tricky with 4x5, even worse with 8x10. You need a good bit o' light to get through that lens to give you ample room.

I've shot 4x5 portraits with a 300mm, just back up a bit more. Most people would use a 210mm. I was generally shooting @ f/16 or f/22.

I've used Nikon Speedlights, shooting into umbrellas via an adapter. Worked for me. Using a power pack will give you faster recycle times, IF your circuits are strong enough. Be careful, older power packs, in particular speedo's, are known for blowing circuits easily.

I was generally shooting at f/11-f/22 on 4x5. speedlights were MAXED out, sometimes I'd have to borrow a friends as well and do double duty, shooting into the same umbrella. Worked though...

go for it. Lots of deals on used studio gear out there now as people retire/ go out of business.

-Dan

 

[Barry S]

It sound like a 2400 ws pack--that should be plenty for 4x5 shooting. Part of it depends on what f-stop you want to shoot at, but you can always add monolights or another pack. It's nice to have at least 4 heads for key, fill, hairlight, and background--but even with a single head you can light well.

 

[Mike Wilde]

I have a 2401A and now 4 102 heads, and shoot 4x5, as well as MF and 35mm. Most of my portraiture is with MF, and here the 2400ws can be a bit much. Sometimes with LF it can be a bit much, but not as often.

I have modified my flash accumulator internally by cutting the plates that each join up the 1200w/s positive and negative capacitor banks, to allow me to either use 1 capacitor per side to this bank (ie 200w/s) or to connect a jumper and then bring it back to 6 capacitors per side. The switch over neda a screw diver and takes about 5 minutes for me to do.

If I am doing a single person, and want narrow DOF, then 800w/s is usally enough for the main, and 400 for the fill. Then having 200w/s for the third head or fourth head to do hiar light or kicker is very handy.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

How about available light, or at most a few 100W lightbulbs? I hate strobes, the sitters hate strobes. Strobes only belong on P&S's (did I mention I don't like strobes?).

4x5 environmental portrait taken with the light of two candles and a 100W table lamp (reflection of lamp can be seen in window), Sinar F, 150mm Sironar W, TMX 100

The lighting is a bit flat as no attempt was made to arrange the lighting. OTOH there aren't any really annoying shadows.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Probably f22 would be sufficient. The 240 is a nice length for portraiture on 4x5. Will your bellows give you enough draw to focus the 240 to portrait distance?

The 2401 pack is a 2400 w/s pack. If I recall correctly, it is a symmetrical output pack, meaning that the outlets for flash heads are divided into groups, and the pack divides the power equally amongst the groups (most likely an A and a B channel). If you plug in only one head, it will run 2400 w/s to that head. If you plug in two heads, it will put 1200 w/s to each head. If you have more than one head plugged in to a given channel, it will split the power equally amongst the heads on that channel (Channel A - 1 head, 1200 w/s, Channel B, 2 heads, 600 w/s each).

For head and shoulders portraits, the 2401a is more than sufficient for 4x5. You may find it is TOO much in some circumstances - you may have to back the lights off farther from your subject to get the output down to where you need it. What kind of light modifiers are you planning to use with this system? Umbrellas, softboxes, or something else? What size is your studio? I used to shoot in a home studio and was able to get what I needed for shooting an 8x10 from a pair of 750w/s monolights, provided I had the lights close to my subject. That was easy because my studio was my dining room, a 12'x10' room. One full-size softbox and I was pushing right in close on my subject.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

You could also shoot faster film to get more DOF if you don't have enough WS.

 

[36cm2]

Interesting stuff. Nicholas, how long was that exposure? Looks good, but flies in the face of everything I've been thinking. I will shoot available light as well, but I was thinking outside on overcast days.

I expect to start with simple lighting schemes, as I'm just starting out with lighting and strobes specifically. Three light setup. Softbox, umbrella and spot was what I was thinking. The space will be small, 10x12 basement area. Not looking to do this professionally, just to learn how to do it well.

It sounds like maybe I would be better off with a 1201 kit, but that might limit using the kit for still life with lots of DOF later on. Also wondering if I need to worry about blowing residential circuits with the draw off the powerpacks.

 

[peri24]

my experience tell me that if you like the look of soft lighting, or you need tons of power to get proper working appertures, or your work space is minuscule go for strobes, a small pack (1200w) with 2 heads should be enough to get f16/22
If you like working with shadows rather than with light don't go with strobes, you'll need fresnels lighting agogo. I tell you that because LF classic portrait style is not done with strobes, you'll need continous light and if you need control continous light and shadows fresnel is the way.
I've never tried fresnel+stobes but it can be a nice solution, when you get used to what you see is not what you get strobe thing.

 

[36cm2]

Thanks peri, I'm very interested in the "shadow" look I think you're describing, but there shouldn't be any reason you couldn't get that with either strobes or continuous lighting. I looked into continuous lighting options at length (easier to learn from and cheaper), but I keep reading that you're faced with too little light for reasonable exposure times and unbearably bright lights for the sitter in a 4x5 context. I'm pretty set on the strobes if that's the case.

 

[peri24]

after working several years with strobes i wont recomend them for portrait lighting, if you need to freeze action or you need light in the middle of nowhere and you are not richard avedon strobes are the only way but in a studio setup they are very hard to work with.
Taking in consideration that your work will be almost black and white is another vote for continuous light, strobes are easy if you work with color (less light filtering).
I think main reason to continuous light especially fresnel is light quality, is quite difficult to explain it but having a light that can be focused gives you many options, a fresnel can be very hard to very soft and you can even bounce it or put fabrics between lights and subject to go softer, a flash just can be soft that's all no more options if you don't spend money with tons of accesories. The illusion of a flash with plain normal reflector as a hard light is the worst lie in the world of lighting.
Another factor that i found when working with people is that a very very little turn of a head can kill a perfect lighting setup, with strobes you will not see that, with continuous light you do! Flashes change light character between their small continous light and the actual strobe light, so they are impractical with very elaborated lighting works.
The only drawback with continuous light is heat if you dont work properly, if your space is "reasonable normal" and you use powerful lights you will be able to move lights away from your subjects and not fry them. Your subjects will only be affected of bright light if it gets to their eyes, a common practice in cinema is to place a powerless light for the catch light in the eyes and use high power to do the rest.
I would tell that if you need complex lighting ala hollywood style use fresnel all the way, it doesnt matter how hard you'll try it with strobes you won't get that look no matter what (well, with hundreds of reflectors, accessories, and fresnel lens for your strobes you can get sort of). But 4 decent fresnels, plus stands, plus some fabric and cinema foil is way cheaper than that.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

after working several years with strobes i wont recomend them for portrait lighting, if you need to freeze action or you need light in the middle of nowhere and you are not richard avedon strobes are the only way but in a studio setup they are very hard to work with.
Taking in consideration that your work will be almost black and white is another vote for continuous light, strobes are easy if you work with color (less light filtering).
I think main reason to continuous light especially fresnel is light quality, is quite difficult to explain it but having a light that can be focused gives you many options, a fresnel can be very hard to very soft and you can even bounce it or put fabrics between lights and subject to go softer, a flash just can be soft that's all no more options if you don't spend money with tons of accesories. The illusion of a flash with plain normal reflector as a hard light is the worst lie in the world of lighting.
Another factor that i found when working with people is that a very very little turn of a head can kill a perfect lighting setup, with strobes you will not see that, with continuous light you do! Flashes change light character between their small continous light and the actual strobe light, so they are impractical with very elaborated lighting works.
The only drawback with continuous light is heat if you dont work properly, if your space is "reasonable normal" and you use powerful lights you will be able to move lights away from your subjects and not fry them. Your subjects will only be affected of bright light if it gets to their eyes, a common practice in cinema is to place a powerless light for the catch light in the eyes and use high power to do the rest.
I would tell that if you need complex lighting ala hollywood style use fresnel all the way, it doesnt matter how hard you'll try it with strobes you won't get that look no matter what (well, with hundreds of reflectors, accessories, and fresnel lens for your strobes you can get sort of). But 4 decent fresnels, plus stands, plus some fabric and cinema foil is way cheaper than that.

Speak for yourself when you say that strobes are hard to work with!

Strobe light can be just as hard or just as soft as continuous light. You can put a strobe in a reflector, in a fresnel, or an umbrella or softbox and get the same qualities of light you get with continuous light. They also have the advantage of not barbecuing your subject. Dealing with the heat by moving the lights away becomes a self-defeating solution- the farther away you move the light, the harder the light becomes, and the weaker it becomes at the subject, thus requiring MORE lights which throw off MORE heat. By working with hot lights, unless you have TONS of light, you will be dealing with exposures long enough to potentially permit motion blur to affect your subjects or else force you to work with shallow enough depth of field that you may not get the results you are looking for. While I know that much classic "Hollywood Glamour" work was done with hot lights, do you know how many thousands of watts George Hurrell used? He was working with lighting on the level a motion picture studio uses!

 

[peri24]

These are my opinions after working 4 years as light assistant with top photographers, after trying hundreds of different lights, and different setups, mainly in portrait, fashion and commercials.
By the way, there is not any better or perfect light in the market than the sun itself. That's for sure.
The closest thing on earth is a fresnel spot. Flash light is the fast food of lighting. (i even could compare them with analog/digital photography)
Sure it's more hassle working with continuous light, they get really hot. But if you care enough to still shoot 4x5 in this crazy world, it means you appreciate the hassle if it is worth it, and yes it does!!
Usually people that demonize continuous light have never work with fresnels or good lights systems, they compare flashes to cheapo continous light that they are everything but not power efficient, get yourself a nice 600w fresnel, a lightmeter and you won't believe your readings.
Anyway if you are happy and can get every lighting setup that you wonder with flash forget my words. Go and shoot!!

 

[2F/2F]

I have the opportunity to purchase a Speedtron 2401A powerpack and a couple of 102 flash heads for what seems to be a decent price. My understanding is that you need quite a bit of light to shoot studio portraits using a 4x5. I know almost nothing about strobes. Would this setup be powerful enough? I would be shooting in a small home studio with a 4x5 field camera, Fujinon 240A lens, mainly head and shoulders shots, 95% black and white. Hoping to shoot at apertures with ample depth of field for full head focus. I'm not sure what that would be, maybe F/22 - F/32?

The aperture you need for enough D of F will depend on the shot. The higher the magnification (meaning the larger your subject is made to be on the film and then on the print), the more you need to stop down to get what you said you want.

So, set up a friend as a model, and compose a picture with the camera at a magnification that is average for the pix you mean to take. Measure the distance from the film plane to the model's eyeballs, and then you can use that to do some D of F calculations.

FWIW, 6x7 will not give you any noticeable drop in quality at the most common print sizes (11x14 and under), and it will give you more D of F for a given composition.

 

[2F/2F]

I would definitely not use the word "easier" to describe continuous lighting over electronic flash! I would say quite the opposite, in fact.

Easier does not equate with better in all circumstances, however, so I am not using "easier" as an argument for flash over tungsten.

I would also say that flash and tungsten lights can theoretically be made to look exactly alike. Light is light. However, the practical reality of the housings and accessories available for each will almost always make for differences, however small.

I agree that the wide variety of housings in which continuous lamps have been made over the years gives them a different character in general than the relatively tiny flash heads that you get with a studio flash set up. The quality of light of clamping various modifiers to a small flash head is different than using various sizes and settings of fresnels, Softlites, etc. Practically speaking, when people use continuous light, just by means of the ways they are designed, housed, and accessorized, they are usually using a warmer light (color of light makes a huge difference, even in b/w pix), a larger light (due to larger inherent size of housings), a closer light (due to lower light output, which makes an already inherently larger housing even larger in relation to the subject), and also, a light which in practice tends to be modified differently. (For instance, soft boxes - AKA direct-diffused light - are more commonly used with flash, while bare bulb or bounce - a la the extremely common Mole-Richardson Softlites - is more commonly used with continuous light. It is not that any modifier cannot be used with any light, just that you have to try a bit harder to rig up the commonly used modifiers from one to the other, and most people will not bother to do anything hard.) All of these things (warmer light, larger light, closer light, differently-modified light) make for differences, to say the least.

I will also say that it is easier to make flash look like tungsten than to make tungsten look like flash, so flash is the more versatile light source.

Speaking of color pix, tragically, all tungsten films are no longer being manufactured, and all negative tungsten films have already been gone for several years. Looking forward to the near future when our stashes have been run through and commercial processing is near impossible to obtain, this makes blue filtration a must for shooting with tungsten lamps in color (either on the lamps or on the lens). This eats two stops, and is not quite as perfect in color as a true tungsten-balanced film.

I use both and like both. I prefer the way tungsten lamps are housed and accessorized, however, and the resulting qualities of light. I like flash for when I need to work quickly and/or freeze action (including when I need/want to hand hold), and/or work outside the studio (smaller and lighter, by far). I just wish flashes came in all the nifty Mole-Richardson housings!

P.S. A strobe is a light that repeatedly flashes at set intervals, like an automotive timing light. The things we tend to erroneously call "strobes" are actually called "electronic flash".

P.P.S. Remember that one of the major differences in the different looks you achieve with flash and tungsten in b/w pix is the color of the light. Do not discount this. The first step in trying to make one look like the other is to make it throw the same color of light. This means blue filter tungsten or orange filter flash.

 

[peri24]

flash light is harder in the way that if you have never work with flash there is more things to know (synchro, dealing with the differences that no one seems to care between modeling light of electronic flashes and the actual flash light, thousand of accessories that you should know what they do, and so on) i can recall some of the lighting class, and they always start with continuous to then move to electronic flash, and it looks quite common practice in all lighting classes i've ever seen so far.
I really doubt that you can make look a flash like continuous light (tungsten, hmi or whichever) or the other way around, it's IMPOSSIBLE, if it was the case not a single photographer would care about continuous light, and i can tell you, it's not the case.
The main problem is that the vast majority of photographers doesn't care too much about lighting, so they are just find with strobes, if you need simple lighting of course they are easier, but if you try to do heavy lighting stuff you can turn crazy with flash and their not matching quality and output between modeled and strobed light. Yes you can used which ever accessory that you want, but a flash is a flash no matter what.
I've had this same conversation with fellow photographers, all the ones that have tested proper continuous lights, seem to prefer it over flash. We know that is not about the reflectors you can attach whatever you want to flash (a huge mole fresnel for exemple) and still it isn't the same. You can match color of lights quite easy with filters, so it's not the color of light. One of the reason for that difference i don't know for sure can be that with flash the light freeze everything at very fast velocity with continuous not, maybe; light bulbs size? maybe
i dont know, i just know they are different and which one i prefer.

 

[viridari]

Usually people that demonize continuous light have never work with fresnels or good lights systems, they compare flashes to cheapo continous light that they are everything but not power efficient, get yourself a nice 600w fresnel, a lightmeter and you won't believe your readings.

Meanwhile your subject is sweating up a storm, the makeup is melting and the hair is coming undone.

I don't wish to undermine your enthusiasm for continuous lighting as it definitely does have its strengths. But it's not the panacea you're painting it to be (if it were, the rest of us wouldn't be invested so heavily in strobes).

 

[BenZucker]

Im not going to say flash or continuous light is better or worse, but I will give you this advice. Do get some strobes, but dont get an old spedotron pack. Get some mono-lights. On almost all of the old spedo packs its hard to control the output of each head individually, and dealing with that head ach will limit you actually learning how to light. I would just bite the bullet and buy ONE mono light to start out, and learn how to use it, and then use it with a fill card, and then use it out of the studio and start to understand how you can mix it with with the ambient light outside. Then after this start getting more heads as you need. I would also get a basic book on lighting, the pictures in them are usually super cheesy, but there is information you can take from them. I will say the only kind of continuous lighting I would entertain would be Kino-flo or something similar (these lights can be daylight or toungstan balanced, they are not hot to the touch, and produce a wonderful light), but for your and the subjects sake i personally would not use most of the continuous light mentioned above. Hope that helps.

 

[peri24]

i have flashes also, in fact quite expensive battery power packs that i'm using outside in the field so no one here its talking about panaceas or magical formulas. I just try to make clear my point in which for portrait lighting i think continuous is the way to go.
Seriously again? the same heating story again? you can see that i'm from a very hot country and i've been shooting here in august with continous fresnels without any problems, but you guys..., what do you think that a continuous light do?, of course they are hotter than flash and moving lights around gloves are a must, but you are trying to look them like huge firing torchs!!, are you putting them literally over the faces of people or what? if they were that bad all movie stars would be carbonize by now!! a flash and a continuous light should be treated different, have you really try them? seriously?

 

[peri24]

kino-flo or this kind of fluorescent light is indeed very nice, but its just soft light, a really nice one but just soft, it doesnt matter you use that shiny reflectors it won't move from the soft side.

 

[Mike Wilde]

The 2401 pack is a 2400 w/s pack. If I recall correctly, it is a symmetrical output pack, meaning that the outlets for flash heads are divided into groups, and the pack divides the power equally amongst the groups (most likely an A and a B channel).

Nope- they are more complicated,though easy to use. 400w/s feeds two outlets, 800 w/s feeds two outlets, and 1200w/s feds two outlets.

Two switches to let you bridge 400 to 800, and 800 to 1200. Per two sockets, yes they are symettrical.

 

[36cm2]

Well this is the fourth time in the last year that I've been on the verge of buying lighting equipment and have been confused to the point of inaction. Maybe the best advice is to get a good book on lighting and figure out what the hell I'm doing before plunking down a big chunk of change. Any recommendations on a good basic lighting book are welcome. Thanks to everyone for the tremendous and detailed advice. I had already considered this at length, but there is still a lot more to consider than I had originally thought. Looks like outdoor available light for the next few weeks until I figure out what the deal is.

 

[Mats_A]

Any recommendations on a good basic lighting book are welcome.

Start with Light, science and magic Excellent book.

r

 

[markbarendt]

Well this is the fourth time in the last year that I've been on the verge of buying lighting equipment and have been confused to the point of inaction. Maybe the best advice is to get a good book on lighting and figure out what the hell I'm doing before plunking down a big chunk of change. Any recommendations on a good basic lighting book are welcome. Thanks to everyone for the tremendous and detailed advice. I had already considered this at length, but there is still a lot more to consider than I had originally thought. Looks like outdoor available light for the next few weeks until I figure out what the deal is.

IMO until you try some lights you will continue to be confused.

Outdoor like you are thinking strobes are great.

Pick your back ground and set your camera to place that exposure where you please to compliment your subject.

Use the strobes to light the subject to your taste.

http://www.philborges.com uses this type of technique. Great when done well.

 

[Chazzy]

I'm very interested in this discussion, but something no one has mentioned is the problem of electricity. I live in an older apartment with only two circuits (I have to unplug the refrigerator when I run the microwave), and one of the realities of doing portraits in my living room is that it would be very easy to blow a fuse with multiple lights. I even worry about having several AC-powered strobes recycling at the same time. The best I have been able to figure out is that my apartment wiring should be able to accommodate charging one of those portable battery packs, if I run strobes off of that. In the meantime I am doing the best I can with battery-powered hot-shoe flashes (I have several of them) and umbrellas and dreaming of renting some time in a well-equipped studio.