Ready for some low key moody portraits with the Nanlite Forza 60C? Continuous lighting can really up your portrait photography game. In this photography video tutorial, I walk you through how I set up my lights and why. In addition, I talk about my camera settings as well.
Equipment Used:
Camera: Canon EOS R3
Lens: Canon RF28-70mm F2 L USM
Light: Nanlite Forza 60C
Team:
Photographer: Sal Cincotta
Model: Violet
Hair & Makeup: Brandi Patton, ReFine Beauty
What’s up everybody? My name is Sal Cincotta. Today we’re going to create some low key moody portraits using continuous light from Nanlite. I am obsessed with continuous lights. Now, I will tell you we are in my studio. There’s a lot of natural light pouring in, and I’m going to show you a little bit of how we blacken that out using your on-camera settings.
That being said, I want to give you a little tour of what we’ve got going on here. So the key light here is again, a Forza 60C. They’re battery powered or you can plug them in, which gives you a lot of portability. We’ve got their 60 FMM softbox here with a grid, so we really want to control that light.
I really like this C, for full color. We’re catch throwing a yellow light RGB and then a purple light into the scene, so to really give it a feel and more texture. I find working with gels and colors really adds some texture to your portraits. When you’re working with gels, you can do this with strobes, but it takes a little bit longer to get everything to look right. That’s why I like continuous lights because what you see is what you get.
We’ve got the always beautiful Violet behind us and she’s got a really rocking outfit here that fits the scene. We’ve got a background that is from Intuition Backgrounds. It’s a new wall that they just launched for their collection. For the camera I’m using a Canon EOS R3 and a 28-70 lens. Let’s get to it.
Lighting Setup
So what I want to do is get rid of some ambient light in the room. To do that I’m at aperture priority ISO 200, 200 of a second F2, and I’m just going to see what this sets up to be. So it’s metering in at 1/60th of a second because when you’re an aperture priority, the only thing that’s going to change is the shutter speed. So you have control of everything else.
If I take this portrait, it’s really nice but the lighting is very flat. If I want to make this a little darker, I’ve got to shoot this above 1/60th of a second. So what I’m going to do is flip this into manual mode, and I’m going to shoot this at F2 1/500 of a second. Now I’m seeing a very under-lit portrait. It’s not completely black, I’m not really going for that. But I don’t want to have to drag the shutter and let in any ambient light once I turn on these other lights, so that’s where my head’s at. And what I’ll do from there is I will make that adjustment with the Nanlite to make sure that I’m higher or at 1/500th of a second with lighting.
Aperture Priority Mode
Settings: f/2 @ 1/160, ISO 200
Manual Mode
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Now what I’m going to do is turn on the key light here, and this has been adjusted and I will start adding. So here’s a portrait just with our key light, no color, and I want you to see how this image comes along.
Key Light Only
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
It’s a nice portrait, but I feel like without color it really doesn’t have that sense of anything. It just looks like a flat studio portrait. So, now I’m going to add the purple and yellow, and I really feel like this is going to end up coming to life. I want to have that yellow wash across the wall and I want some of it to hit her. We have the same shot, same frame up, and boy, that image now has so much more depth and life to it. I mean, I’m hoping you guys agree.
Key Light + Yellow and Purple Light
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
So it wasn’t hard to set this up. Now, what you see is what you get. We’re off to the races.
Final Images
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
Settings: f/2 @ 1/500, ISO 200
All right everybody, hopefully you love this video. Be sure to check out Nanlite at Nanliteus.com. We’ll see you next time.
