(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best light meters & accessories

Since the camera doesn't have a hot-shoe, you're definitely going to have to be more "creative" with lighting.

The gear used in studio portraiture is there because the photographer is controlling all aspects of the shot. You can substitute other equipment to give you similar control, resulting in photos that achieve similar effects. However, without the specialized gear, you'll be improvising. And while you're doing that, you'll need to know what's being accomplished by the specialized gear, and what you can and cannot simulate by other means.

The camera used for most portraiture is generally a DSLR (or 35mm film). The large sensor (in comparison to the point-and-shoots) results in better image quality, and higher resolution images suitable for larger prints. Your camera has a much smaller sensor, so you'll have to be content with the resolution it gives you.

The lenses used are often "fast" -- f/2.8 or wider -- allowing for fine control of the depth of field, and creamy bokeh (the blurry background), which in turn makes your subjects "pop" in the image. Your camera has a single lens, which you cannot change. You should be able to adjust the aperture setting in some of the shooting modes -- you'll have to look at your camera manual to figure out how to do that.

The multiple flashes and flash modifiers allow for fine control the amount, direction, and quality of light. The flashes can be set for varying intensity, moved to different locations, and fire behind softboxes, bounce off walls or ceilings, through a snoot or grid to eliminate spillage, etc. These multiple light sources illuminate the subject, and give depth and texture that gets blown out when using the on-camera flash (note, this happens with both point-and-shoot as well as DSLR cameras -- on-axis flash tends to flatten textures).

Realistically, you only have control of the light. You can use some clip on utility lights similar to these on Amazon, with total spectrum CFLs or incandescent bulbs. You can build some DIY light modifiers (like a screen for a soft-box) to soften the light hitting your subjects. Plus, you can never have enough clip lights for working on stuff around the house!

Combine the clip lights with dimmer switches, and you will be able to vary the amount of light coming from each source. Of course, you'll have to pay careful attention to the white balance of the image, and I recommend getting a grey card or cloth, and shooting that after you change the light intensity. One great tool for this is the Datacolor Spyder Cube, which has 18% grey, white, and black faces, an absolute black hole, and a reflective ball for specular highlights. But again, that adds gear. Without a neutral grey card or the Spyder Cube, make sure you include something white or grey in a test shot to white balance against. If you use something white, just be aware that it's easy to blow out the white when exposing the image, and that makes it lots hard to use as a reference for white balancing...

You can get acceptable results with a single light source (whether that's hot or cold continuous lights, strobes, studio flashes, or something as simple as a North-facing window where all the light from that direction is diffuse reflected light). You can get decent results with a single light and a reflective surface on the other side (effectively behaving like two lights) as the key and fill lights. You get better control with two lights, key and fill. You get better results if you can add a hair light to bring some directional illumination from above. And still better results if you can control the amount of light on the background. In each case, you need to understand what each light is doing and experiment with different placements so that you know what looks best with your subjects.

The other non-gear aspect of studio portraiture is the positioning and posing of your subject(s). That also requires a lot of research and practice...

The best thing about digital though, is you can start shooting right away, and keep looking at what you've done, and keep getting better!

>In your subjective opinion, is a hardware-calibrated monitor significantly more beautiful than a software-tweaked one, and is it worth the $150 or so it'd cost for a colorimeter?

Yes, absolutely. Having spent the money I consider it worth every penny. Once you know calibrated reference color, you can't go back. Our eyes will readjust and compensate for a lot of differences over time. Those who like using f.lux, for example, often comment on not noticing it's effects after a while.

This is because f.lux is basically an automated color profile changer. It goes from a higher color temperature (7K/6500K or so) down to a very low color temperature as it approaches night time. This makes sense, since the human eye tends to view colors a bit cooler under lower lighting conditions.

While f.lux can feel pleasing, it's does result in inaccurate colors. If you wanted an f.lux like experience with accurate color, you would create a profile for each lighting condition your room has. Primarily an 'overhead lights on' profile calibrated for 6500K 2.2 gamma, and a 'lights off' profile that might be something like 5500K 2.2 gamma.

I consider this a bit overkill though, I stick to one daytime profile, and I have a fluorescent bulb in my overhead that is more of a 'daytime' color temperature. Photo studios go to extremes and use high end monitors with hoods to reduce direct light from hitting the screen, and they have accurate color temperature bulbs of a known brightness.

Personally though, I think one of the better advantages to calibration is also setting the luminance level. Lots of LED backlit monitors can get REALLY bright, but brightness is only beneficial under really harsh lighting conditions, and often washes out the color. Monitors also tend to overgain the colors a bit on high lighting conditions, so you lose some accuracy.

The best way to calibrate, imo, is to 120 cd/m2. This is a nice, even brightness, and while somewhat 'dim looking' at first is quickly compensated by your eyes and brain. This also tends to reduce eye strain. In addition, lots of monitors now can go 200 cd/m2 and up, so by having the brightness significantly lower than its maximum, you often reap the benefit of more accurate color.

As far as a tool, I ended up getting the Spyder4Studio, because I knew I was going to need a printer profiler also and it saved me money.

For your purposes I would go with the Spyder4Pro since it's the same hardware as the Spyder4Elite, only limited by software license. You also get to use it on multiple monitors, vs the 1 monitor limitation of the Spyder4Express.

If you end up needing the features of the Spyder4Elite later, you can just upgrade the software package (I'm not sure if it's more expensive that way vs buying the Elite outright, though).

I scan all of my RGD drawings and primarily work in graphite. I use a canoscan 8600f but I believe they have updated the model to the 9000. It works pretty well. Sometimes the dark pencils (the ole' 9b) can get reflective, particularly when you mix media and they are drawn on a dark surface. The only way to avoid that is to make a whole elaborate setup. Black felt behind the art. Studio lighting. Then you can spread you light sources so wide they won't reflect as much.

By that point, if you aren't working to large, it's easier to just scan and use a white balance card. Just include that little guy into the scan and use the black, white, and grey eyedropper tools in the "levels" settings in Photoshop. Any reflections, you can edit out to make it match the real values of the drawing.

_Dead's suggestion with the shade is the best method for shooting on a larger scale and don't have the resources for a fancy pants setup. Cell phones won't have the best camera for shooting the art but you gotta use what you gotta use.

Just remember, even with a white balance card, the most important thing is making sure the lighting is EVEN. Try your best to make sure there are no hot-spots of light because that is the most difficult to adjust later.

I can go into more detail on fancy pants rigs if needed.

I'd recommend a nice bounce/gray card combo like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015E3AQCO/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_JWfJBbBJA6JFN
It's important to be capturing the best color SOOC and this can be useful for a little more soft light in a pinch.
Save the rest of the cash for a heftier investment.

Definitely overkill. I think the whole "cinematic" trend is getting to be a bit much. When I see videos where cinematic techniques are applied extraneously, I find it distracting and a bit corny. I would say focus your energy on lighting it well and nailing your colours (maybe spend your money on a color checker passport) and pepper in a few beautiful close-ups of your food/ingredients. Good lighting and colour will raise your production values in a manner that is cohesive with the subject matter and people love shallow DOF detail shots.

I have "Light Meter" on IOS, it even has color temperature. Pretty accurate, but you have to get used to it and get a sense of what you're actually metering with a phone app. I tend to use it to get a shadow reading and a highlight reading. If you want to be able to use one as an "incident" meter, you can try things like taking a reading of the palm of your hand, held out in the lighting of the scene. Caucasian skin should meter a stop or two hotter than the actual scene. So if your hand gives you F8, 5.6 or 4 should be in the ballpark, but everyone's skin differs and you'd want to test it. Or you could get a cheap gray card and meter it for the correct exposure, or at least use it to find the difference between your skin and the correct exposure.

Oh, to expand on that, it was a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 f/f L-series lens. I was shooting at around f/9, I believe, and I white balance on the camera before shooting using white balance cards. I often use a reflector as well to fill in the front, but this time I didn't.

Post processing was in Photoshop. I did just a tiny bit more white balancing using a curves layer, then I punch up the highlights and bring down the darks (a standard S-curve). I also use the shadows/highlights tool to bring up the darkest darks so they aren't just straight up black.

I then make a mask around the parts that I really want to feature (in this case the beef and the folded towel on the right), the do a minor Gaussian blur on everything else to just slightly blur it, which makes the meat and texture on the towel pop a little more. Too much and it ends up looking like an Instagram photo.

Similarly, I use that same mask to blow out the lights and darks in the un-masked sections slightly so that the beef and towel pop even more. The key is really being subtle about it though. I probably did a quick sharpen on the whole image as well.

Actually, the REAL key is good lighting. You get good lighting and you're 99% of the way towards a good photograph.

i just went with good reviews on amazon.com. There are plenty of models with 4/5 star reviews that you can try to find on ebay.ca or amazon.ca

Ebay might be your best bet as amazon.ca is pretty overpriced

Just make sure it measures up to 100,000 ... dont get the 50,000 one.

This is the cheapest one I could find with good reviews on amazon.ca: https://www.amazon.ca/GoerTek-Luxmeter-Illuminance-Handheld-Actionometer/dp/B01J19FMWG/ref=sr_1_30?ie=UTF8&qid=1523330407&sr=8-30&keywords=lux+meter

Color accuracy is important for white balance adjustments and for making sure that what you print is the same as what you see on the screen. I think regardless of which panel type you get, a good investment would be a hardware colorimeter to calibrate your monitor.

I have a dual monitor setup, a 25.5" Asus TN and a Viewsonic which is not TN and is supposed to have good color accuracy. Before calibration, the colors varied pretty dramatically between the two monitors. After calibrating both using a Spyder3Express the colors are quite close between the two monitors.

I think using the colorimeter gets you at least 80% of the way there. If photo editing is not your job, this may be good enough.

Edit: grammar

You can rent a Colormunki Here. A little pricey since you will want to verify your calibration every 30 days or so.

While Datacolor Spyder5 is the latest and greatest, I still use a Spyder3 and it works very well. You can get a new one on Amazon for a pretty reasonable $85.

Hope this helps

I've been using a Gossen Digisix for years and have been happy with it. It's tiny, weighs almost nothing, has done a fine job as far as I can tell with giving accurate readings, and has survived a few falls onto concrete. I could have sworn when I bought it I got it for only ~$100, so maybe it's cheaper elsewhere?

I also used this light meter through my school, but I've never owned one. I recall not liking something about the design quite as much (no idea what since it's been years), but it worked well for me.

I have no idea if those are the best on the market for that price range, but those are the ones I've personally used.

I use one of these. There are cheaper options, but since you really only need to calibrate every once in a while, you may just want to look into borrowing one of these if you can find someone that has one.

If you're on a Mac, OSX also has built-in calibration software in the System Preferences. There may be other free software options available, but the Spyder hardware/software did a better job of matching my two monitors.

Just buy a chip chart. It is made for this exactly. There is even free software ( Resolve ) that will auto-correct the image from the chip chart.

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https://www.amazon.com/Datacolor-SCK200-SpyderCHECKR-24/dp/B00LPS46TW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1550376522&sr=8-2&keywords=chip+chart

http://www.amazon.com/uWinka-Standard-Scale-White-Balance/dp/B009DXIHUU/

$11 for 2. So share with a friend. $5.50 each.

The equipment is incredibly expensive. I study Digital Printing and Graphics Technology, so all my classes are about digital calibration techniques and things like that. We use these to create our own printer profiles and to make sure everything we print is accurate.

You can try these white balance cards. I am not color blind and I still love using them. Just hold up the grey one in the light you are shooting in, and then use that to set the color balance for all of the pictures.

http://www.amazon.com/Neewer%C2%AE-Digital-Grey-Card-Set/dp/B00LE7YA18/ref=sr_1_3?s=photo&ie=UTF8&qid=1457050432&sr=1-3&keywords=white+balance+cards

>I'm kind of useless at judging what kind of light the rest of the apartment gets outside of this.


I do understand the problem, another problem is that your eyes adjust to the light conditions which makes the amount of light deceiving.

Years back I invested in a Lux meter. It measures the amount of light. I use it to determine what is the brightest and what is the shadiest spot in my living.

These values do I use.

>1000 Lux = very bright light (In full sun I grow Crassula ovate here, south faced window)
10.000 Lux = bright light (With some morning sun I grow Dracaena here and for instance Stapelia).
5000 Lux = light shade (Among others my Anthurium grows here, also Spathyphilum)
2000 Lux = shade (Boston Fern, Phalaenopsis orchids)

These are just guidelines.

I have exactly the same one as this one https://www.amazon.com/SODIAL-Light-Lx1010b-Luxmeter-Display/dp/B00SO31JI2/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1525274886&sr=8-5&keywords=lx1010b&dpID=41cE2psCvFL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch
I hope I'm allowed to mention a link as example for what I have. Of coarse there are other sources to obtain them.


Mine works flawlessly. It told me that in the middle of the room with a North and South window, I have 1/4 of the amount of light than in my Nord window with overhang! I couldn't see that difference with my eyes.

I’d recommend a PAR meter, as lux and lumens are for humans, also if you do get a lux meter and you are running leds then you’ll need to make sure it’s led compatible, like this one on Amazon

A ColorChecker Passport might help. It makes it so you can nail the correct colors every single time. For something a less expensive, a simple gray card will at the very least make sure your white balance is on-point for each shooting environment.

I bought a Spyder3 Pro and have been very happy with it.

http://imgur.com/a/woCTh#0

The one with aurora really shows the color loss I'm talking about.

A coworker, who uses one of these on his laptop because he does print work on the side, and my wife both asked me why everything was so grey and blurry. So it's not me or people's monitors.

If higher saturation settings for FXAA injector weren't as popular as they are I'd say you're on to something, but they are popular. Which makes me think the coloring does need a little boost.

In fact my coworker had originally purchased it and didn't want to play it until I showed him the FXAA injector.

I'd start with +1 (and adjust from there). Most Caucasian skin is about 1 stop over middle grey. Your camera should have a feature that will blink if a region is over exposed (so you could keep raising it until, for example, your eyes blink then backing down a bit). You'll probably need to reduce brightness a little in post processing if that's your choice, but it should give you the most room to fiddle with contrast/clarity and color to maximize contrast in the range you're have the most detail).

Specifically I pulled the curve up a good amount. It doesn't translate directly to a change in stops, but for most of the pic it's between 1 and 2 stops.

I personally use a grey card like this:
www.amazon.com/DGK-Color-Tools-DGK-XL-Lanyard-White/dp/B007FH8MS8/
It's small enough to carry in a pocket, plastic so it's durable, you don't need that one (there are lots of grey cards of various kinds). When I had a Nikon there was a set white balance procedure that when activated would use the majority of the next photo to set the white balance (or could pick it based on the any picture you've already taken). The manual will tell you if you need to fill the frame with the neutral source, and it doesn't need to be in focus (i just hold it at arms length and snap a blurry picture if the lens can't focus that close).

As others mentioned, stopping down will keep eyelashes in focus.

Invest in a color card, something like: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Datacolor-SpyderCHECKR-24-SCK200-Color/dp/B00LPS46TW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1551006216&sr=8-5&keywords=color+checker+passport

Resolve can easily correct the captured image using these, then it's a little easier to add your creative grade.

As for a LUT pack? I've never felt the need for one. Admittedly, I'm not a pro nor even a spectacularly prolific amateur, but a decently corrected image is IMHO more than half the battle.

You don't necessarily have to rely on built-in scenarios if you have a nice camera. I use this for white balance calibration:

http://www.amazon.com/DGK-Color-Tools-DGK-XL-Lanyard-White/dp/B007FH8MS8

Good question. I bought it on Amazon a while ago, so I don't know the specific one, but this looks very similar to what I have.

Follow up question: why wouldn't an exposure gray card work for WB? Are exposure gray cards that non-neutral?

Get a cheap lux meter on amazon for about $35, I was recommended this one and it seems to work well. Tried to use an app but it seemed really inaccurate. Also a humidity/temperature meter would be a cheap investment.

You can use anything white, or you can get a specific 18% grey card (will arrive by Thursday with Prime.)

The camera will set the white balance for you. Menu > Camera Settings > White Balance > Custom Setup. Page 36 of the user manual. Point it at a white or grey thing and push set.

http://www.amazon.com/GENUINE-WhiBal-Certified-Neutral-Balance/dp/B004G3NW5M/ref=sr_1_12?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1425934278&sr=1-12&keywords=white+balance

I have this one at it works as advertised and is durable.

Along with the Lightroom suggestion (I also highly recommend this software) you might consider picking up a monitor calibration tool.
I say this because of a shoot I did for work for one of our projects.
When I uploaded my pictures the color looked off. I made my corrections and emailed the photos.
A couple of weeks later I was surprised to see a couple of those pictures hanging on the wall in our conference room.
Sadly the color balance was off and the pictures had a green cast to them.
When I investigated by looking at the pictures on a few different computers in the office, I noticed a wide range of color results. The color of the pictures varied depending on the screen I was viewing them on.
I picked up a Spider 3 Express to calibrate my monitor color, on my laptop and home computer, and now my color is accurate when I have pictures printed.
It does run another $80 though. It's an option you may want to investigate down the road.

Have you got a camera that can shoot RAW?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00LPS46TW + lightroom (there's a specific method to these colour checkers to get the colour/light balance you need) will get you as close as you can without using a spectrophotometer.