Tradition

Carrying on my habit of forgetting to post any more frequently than annually ... one would have thought that I would post more frequently with a pandemic going on with all of the related social distancing!

So, I picked up a second-hand Profoto B1 (not the recent X model) from KEH. The battery seems to be in good shape. So far so good - it holds a charge well, and I seem to get a ton of shots from a charge. 

I also got the Chimera Octa Beauty 30" beauty dish. With this modifier, I look forward to trying out harder light. Here are some samples from my latest selfie session.

I am still struggling with positioning of the light to get the big catchlights in the eyes. The light is positioned straight ahead of me, just slightly above eye level. I will try experimenting with angling the light so it is pointing directly at my eyes. 

One of the things I am quickly learning is that direction is extremely critical with the beauty dish - I got spoiled by the fact that soft boxes are not quite as sensitive to small changes in  direction of the light.

Another thing I tried in this session was setting the AF setting to Automatic with face detection switched on. This does a good job of focusing on my glasses, but the camera doesn't lock focus on my eyeballs. This becomes more of an issue when shooting with wider apertures.

As with other selfie sessions, framing and composition becomes a real guessing game, especially when moving in close to the camera. One of the downsides of taking "old skool" selfies this way. I keep telling myself that the surprises in framing is part of the adventure! :-)

Takeaways, if any:

• be careful with light placement - small changes make big differences with a beuaty dish!
• experiment further with how the camera determines AF to get the the focus locked on the eyeballs.
• framing, framing framing!
• I am getting older by the minute! :-)