# Candle light portrait?



## photomeli (Jul 20, 2012)

Hello, 

I was recently asked to do a photo shoot for a hair salon "after" photos of the hairstyles. We are doing one natural look outdoors and another more unique setting by candle light. I have never done anything with candlelight...

My question is can I do this with just candles and still have enough light to show these hairstyles? I am afraid to add any extra light because I don't want to have the color off and I am also not experienced with off camera flash. If you put me in a studio, no problem, but experimenting with my external flash is something I have yet to do.

I told my client that the more white we have the better because it will reflect the light and I told her 50-100 candles but I know she is trying to do it with less so that she won't have to buy so many. 

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated, the shoot is next week and I am so nervous that it's going to be an epic fail.


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## o hey tyler (Jul 20, 2012)

So if you're in a studio, and you're comfortable with that... Why aren't you comfortable with off camera lighting on location? 

Do you not use flash in your studio?


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## ceejtank (Jul 20, 2012)

You can shoot by just candle light if the images want to be dark.. just use your flash, change your AWB.  50 - 100 candles seems outrageous.


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## photomeli (Jul 20, 2012)

I have just never done it and I am not sure about the different settings. I have the Vivitar 285. The studio I use is an advanced set up at school with great equipment and I can set everything the way I want it, meter it and go.


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## 12sndsgood (Jul 20, 2012)

go home. light up a few candles and practice.


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## SoCalTiger (Jul 20, 2012)

ceejtank said:


> You can shoot by just candle light if the images want to be dark.. just use your flash, change your AWB.  50 - 100 candles seems outrageous.



I actually think this might be a good idea. OP would just need a manual flash set at a very low setting and gelled with something like 2xCTO or CTO + a red? Getting the tone to match the candlelight would be critical and the flash would need to be low enough power to not totally overpower the candles. You'd want to illuminate the subject and have candles in the background/bokeh to give the "appearance" of candlelight.


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## tirediron (Jul 20, 2012)

You're not going to get the results you're looking for with candles.  They simply do not provide the necessary light.  You're going to need to look into snoots, grids and gels.


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## photomeli (Jul 20, 2012)

we are looking for enough light on the hair but sort of a darker look. I like the idea of popping the flash on the subject to mimic candle light, but I am still concerned about having too much trial and error. I won't have a way to meter it that way so I am afraid it will take me too long to get the exposure down. Does anyone think this is possible with just candles and some reflectors? 

What about opening the curtain and letting in a little bit of sunlight?


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## amolitor (Jul 20, 2012)

The trouble you're going to run in to with candles is that the flames will utterly blow out before you get any exposure at all on the objects that are being lit by the candles.

You need to fill. A snoot is fine. Been there, done that. You can use a rolled up newspaper taped to small hot shoe strobe of whatever kind you like, off camera if you haven't got a box full of light modifiers already. Been there, done that. Since you're simulating a candle, the shadows SHOULD be harsh, so you don't need anything except directionality/containment of the light.

You're gonna have to trial and error it to balance the candle flame with the flash. Experiment at home to get in the ballpark. The light cast by the candle(s) is irrelevant, so all you really need is what EV produces a natural looking candle flame. Then light with a snooted strobe for a suitable dim look.


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## KmH (Jul 20, 2012)

By adding sunlight you would then have mixed lighting, an almost impossible white balance issue to deal with post process, unless you gel the window light to match the color temperature of the candle light.


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## amolitor (Jul 20, 2012)

KmH said:


> By adding sunlight you would then have mixed lighting, an almost impossible white balance issue to deal with post process, unless you gel the window light to match the color temperature of the candle light.



Honestly, my experience with candles is that they're irrelevant in the lighting scheme, except that the color temperature of the flame will look odd, I suppose. I would just shoot with a strobe, warm it up to look candle-ish afterwards, and then fix any flames as necessary to look right with local color tweaking.

Mostly I do b&w though, so I haven't REALLY thought this through. Geling the strobe would probably be better than warming up in post, for some.. technical reason? It feels right to me, anyways!


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## TCampbell (Jul 20, 2012)

As the "photographer" recognize that it's your job to know how to create a "look" even if you do cheat.  What the client wants is a photo that appears to have been taken by candle-light... it doesn't actually need to be by candle-light and, if it's hair ... candle-light (the real thing) is probably not such a good idea.  I'll explain.

In order to show off the hair you need some edge-contrast between the hair and the background.  And since individual strands of hair tend to be shiny, they'll reflect light too... but the rules of reflections apply here.  Meaning if you are in FRONT of a subject and want the hair to shine, then there' needs to be some light obliquely placed BEHIND the subject (at an angle) so that the light "bounces" off the hair (causing the shine) and into the camera.  A snoot (narrow tunnel through which the light will shine so that no stray light will travel in any direction OTHER than the direction you pointed it at) will help you achieve this.  Note that the actual light will be out of the scene and since no stray light shines on the background, what you get is a shot that with some candles in the foreground, some shiny reflective hair, a dim background... and yet the real truth is you've got more lighting in that scene than most people might guess.

To define the edges, you might actually place a strobe completely behind your subjects. 

The candle itself is a relatively tiny pin-point source of light.  It'll cast a more well-deinfed shadow than you might guess and you may realize it's not such a flattering look for your models.  So a softly diffused light source (meaning light that seems to originate from a very broad area such as a soft-box) may be needed to create soft shadows (shadows which gradually transition from dark to light) and the candle will cast some highlights.  Basically... the whole photo is illuminated by lights... it just happens to have a candle (or two) strategically placed in frame in the foreground such that you're faking out your audience to believing that the candle was the only source of light ... when the truth is far different.


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## photomeli (Jul 21, 2012)

Thanks for all the advice! Looks like the consesus is that I will need to use flash. I will be practicing tonight, hope it works out well!


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## Derrel (Jul 21, 2012)

I would use orange-hued gel filtration on flash, to get the color temperature of the flash down from its approx 5000-5500 degrees Kelvin temp, and closer to the 2,800-3,400 degrees Kelvin range that roughly* looks like candle-light*. As TCampbell mentioned above--if a viewer SEES a CANDLE, there will be a very strong tendency for the viewer to automatically assume that the image was...lighted by candles!

For the sake of consistency--set the camera to a FIXED white balance; do NOT let it run wild in AUTO white balance when shooting this kind of situation.


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## photomeli (Jul 22, 2012)

So I tried to do this last night and it was pretty tricky.  It seemed like my flash was just too powerful so I set the flash to 1/16th power and had someone hold it behind two diffusers about a foot from the diffusers. The diffuser was about 5 feet from the model and then the candles were in the foreground. I don't have remote triggers, but found out that even if I did that it wouldn't work. when I tried it with the flash attached by the chord and off camera, the candles just were way too bright. 

So far what I settled on was putting the shutter speed at 1.3 sec on shutter priority and then releasing the shutter. After the shutter was released for about a second I had my helper pop the flash separately. That was the only thing that seemed to work okay but still not the results I wanted.  Any thoughts?  If these diffusers bareley dimmed the light enough, would a soft box even do any good?


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## SoCalTiger (Jul 22, 2012)

photomeli said:


> So I tried to do this last night and it was pretty tricky.  It seemed like my flash was just too powerful so I set the flash to 1/16th power and had someone hold it behind two diffusers about a foot from the diffusers. The diffuser was about 5 feet from the model and then the candles were in the foreground. I don't have remote triggers, but found out that even if I did that it wouldn't work. when I tried it with the flash attached by the chord and off camera, the candles just were way too bright.
> 
> So far what I settled on was putting the shutter speed at 1.3 sec on shutter priority and then releasing the shutter. After the shutter was released for about a second I had my helper pop the flash separately. That was the only thing that seemed to work okay but still not the results I wanted.  Any thoughts?  If these diffusers bareley dimmed the light enough, would a soft box even do any good?



Is 1/16 the lowest your flash goes? Lots of flashes go down to 1/64 or 1/128. Aside from that, do you have room to pull the flash further back?


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## photomeli (Jul 22, 2012)

Yeah that's as low as it will go. I kind of just tried it a bunch of times until I was far enough back to get the effect. The only thing is I just have the one light so I want to make sure I make the best of it. The gel didn't really seem to make much of a difference, so I was thinking of shooting in WB as flash and then later playing in Raw to find the best warmth for the whole photo. I just don't know if this will really mimic candlelight enough.

I also have to make sure the flash doesn't hit the candles because then just lose all candle characteristics


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## amolitor (Jul 22, 2012)

That seems odd.

What settings were you working with? Is there some reason for having the aperture wide open?


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## photomeli (Jul 22, 2012)

The aperture was stopped down as far as it could go with the shutter speed at 1.3 sec. I think I may have needed to change my ISO, I had it on 640 and forgot to change it.


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## amolitor (Jul 22, 2012)

Ahhh, that makes more sense. I've shot a couple things with candles, and while it's a little finicky, this felt just wrong.

With strobes, ISO 100 always. I've forgotten it a few times myself, though. Why is everything ALL WHITE? What's WROONG!!!!


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## SoCalTiger (Jul 24, 2012)

photomeli said:


> Yeah that's as low as it will go. I kind of just tried it a bunch of times until I was far enough back to get the effect. The only thing is I just have the one light so I want to make sure I make the best of it. The gel didn't really seem to make much of a difference, so I was thinking of shooting in WB as flash and then later playing in Raw to find the best warmth for the whole photo. I just don't know if this will really mimic candlelight enough.
> 
> I also have to make sure the flash doesn't hit the candles because then just lose all candle characteristics



Were you using AWB? If so, that is why the gel had no perceived effect. I would set the in-camera setting to either "Flash" or "Sunlight" WB (whichever matches your flash better) or Custom to actually match it (without any gel). That way, CTO would make the image look more orange relative to the normal color temp of your flash. Ideally, your gel would match the candlelight temperature and then you would appropriately set the WB / colorcast your entire image to simulate candlelight.

Either way - you should shoot in Raw so you can get the color temperature where you exactly want it especially for a project like this.


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