Piano practice

I wanted to show you that according to my last howto about mixed light, you can apply this to real photos (instead of taking photos of empty chairs only):

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Piano practice. Zuleikha, January 2016

Like described in my previous howto, I did the following:

1. I set my camera to manual exposure. It will default to ISO 200, and to 1/160th of a second.
2. Since this isn’t enough exposure for the ambient light in the evenings and in our flat, I opened the lens fully to f/1.4, and set the time to 1/13th of a second. The camera showed -2EV underexposure with this setting.
3. White balance on Custom White Balance 2, like applied and described in my last post.
4. Now I mounted my Yongnuo compact flash (YN-460-II) directly onto my camera, Roscosun 85 gel in front of it, and pointed it upwards against the ceiling.
5. Lowest power setting on the flash – I only wanted a small “kiss” of light from this one, to get Zuleikha’s face lightened up a bit against the surrounding.
6. Take your shot(s).

In “post production” (you *do* shoot raw, n’est-ce pas?), I corrected that CWB2 to about 200 Kelvin less, with tint setting +1 in the direction of amber (instead of green). In my eyes and on my calibrated monitor that looked more natural than the warmer setting I had before. I also corrected the tonal curve to brighten up the lower midtones a bit.

Like usual, I put in some title and tags using RawTherapee. Done. Upload to Flickr and insert it here to write this article about it.

To learn this and much more, consider reading David Hobby’s Strobist site. Go at least through his 101 course which costs absolutely nothing (not even a subscription or login). Then get some cheap lights (like my 40$/€ Yongnuo), and get going. It’s fun – and like someone once said, if you take a picture, you might as well try to take a good one.

Thanks for reading.