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I have been trying to set up cheaply to do a few family portraits. So I have been practicing on myself and want to know what you think about the lighting?

looks allright to me. but I am on a notebook at the moment.

I quite like the dark background as well

Steve

Terrific SP John. Lighting, skin tones, sharpness and composition are all spot on. You have even managed to do a good job on limiting the reflection off the glasses.
cheers
marco

John, a nice portrait and the lighting looks great. I'm interested in how you set up the lighting/ what lighting was used for this shot. I'm a glasses wearer and find it hard to take photos of other people with glasses without getting annoying shadows on their cheeks or reflections in the glass.

Thanks guys. Macka it was a single SB800 straight into an umbrella reflector. The flash itself is about six feet off the ground and the reflector another foot higher than that. I am seated.

I had to play around with the height of the light to get rid of those shadows, and the original seems to have more warmth than the image after hosting on photobucket.

on my main system now.

nice lighting setup.

wonder if you would provide the details of the lighting since you mention doing it on the cheap.
wonder what you have used for a backdrop also.
note that if you have models wearing dark clothing or having dark hair, the black background wont to the job as well as it has with your shot.

Steve

Steve lighting setup is above. The backdrop is a couple of yards of black material I bought from the local fabric shop. It is simply clamped onto a curtain rail in a spare room.

I think its needs a white reflector under the face just out of shot to fill in the darker area's under the chin and hat to even it out a little. There is also alot of noise in the shaddows and background. Was that something that happened post shoot pulling the shaddows out in ps? I also believe that if the flash wasn't so dead on and a reflector was used on the opposing side you could make it a little less flat.
Never underestemate the power of white cardboard

No PP just sharpening. What you are seeing as noise is I believe the texture or weave of the fabric. Thanks for your suggestions, now I just need to buy another reflector and maybe another flash.........................

Its very good. Difficulty ellements are raised due to hat and glasses. No harsh shadows at all.

The lighting is quite good for a flat look and wearing glasses, but if you require a bit more modelling in your lighting, I would move your light back a bit further and moved to the right or left and add a reflector board if possible, or use a combination of flash and window light for more of a different look......... there is a lot of reference on the net for this sort of lighting.........

Not bad - could do with perhaps a touch more warmth (WB tweaking?). But I am on an uncalibrated laptop LCD viewing it.

As for the subject matter ....

Dion somwehow the hosting took some of thye warmth out of it The original has much more.

John this is an excellent portrait. Portraits I find hard at the best of times to get anywhere near right (although they are a very subjective topic), and self portraits for me are almost impossible.

This one is a cracker. Even the well worn Akubra (?) adds to the image.

I think this would make a great avatar for you.

lighting is nice reflected but i think a makeshift softbox will soften the shadow tones produced by your glasses

also try the l;ighting from the side see how you like that