Studio Quality Portraits with a Single Speedlight (Flash Unit)

I was walking by a portrait photographers studio the other day with my daughter. She had looked into the window and was enamored with the quality of work; I have to admit, the
work was nice, very nice. Her comment to me was that she wished she had a portrait like the ones in the window and thought that it would take a lot of equipment and time to create. I’m assuming she was referring to the studio lighting equipment she saw tucked away in the corner of the studio. I explained that it wasn’t too difficult to produce the same quality of work with just one single flash unit, a NIkon SB 900 Speedlight and a 2′x2′ soft box. She didn’t believe me, so naturally, I had to show her as any good father would.

I set up a quick studio in my dining room to demonstrate how quick and easy it would be to create a portrait quality photo with just one light; remember, the SB900. It actually doesn’t matter the flashgun type as long as you have one and can trip it with your camera or a radio transmitter like a PocketWizard.

I attached an SB900 with a 2′x2′ soft box I purchased from Amazon.com (See product recommendations for this article, below.), to a Manfrotto light stand; again, any light stand will work here. Heck, you could even have an assistant hold the soft box and flashgun, but you may not get consistent lighting if the flashgun is not stationary, due to the hand movement.

Positioning the soft box directly in front of and about 6 inches above the models head, I angled the soft box at a 45 degree angle to the face of the model. I brought the box in about 3 feet from her face in order to get a soft light. Now, because of the distance of the soft box from the model, I cut the power output down on the SB900 to 1/20th of power. All of this was controlled from the camera as it was acting as the commander for the wireless flash system. For the background, I basically through up my background stand and clamped a piece of black cardboard (poster board) to the top bar. I’m telling you, I went down and dirty, I was tired and being lazy, so I really didn’t want to drag out the large, canvas black backdrop since it would have been me who would have had to fold it back up. The poster board served the purpose just fine, and it was cheap, I’m talking around $1.50 (USD) at the local drug store.

Ok, back with the program. I have my basic “studio” set-up and light in position. With everything ready to roll, I snapped about 6 shots in total; I was trying to find the sweet spot pose here, so it took me a few shots to get it correct.

By turning the models face, slightly, toward the camera, it allowed for most of the light to fall on to the models left side, with some of it wrapping around her right side. I was particular about the catch light in her eyes and creating the light fall off to her right. For those who will question the authenticity of this image being off the camera due to the warm tone, I changed my white balance from AWB (That’s Auto White Balance for those of you who are not into acronyms.), to the “cloud” preset on my Nikon D300. By doing this, it took the white balance from the flash output ( I turned off all of the incandescent lighting in the dining room so there was no other light source to contaminate my scene or WB) from 5600K to about 7000K. By making this white balance change on camera, it produces a warmer image because the camera thinks that you are shooting in a cooler color temperature and by changing the settings, you are basically telling the camera to compensate for the cooler color temp and it does by warming up the scene a bit, or a lot depending on how much Kelvin you dial in using a custom white balance setting. Whew! Did I just say all of that? Are you still with me? Just know if you set your WB preset to anything higher than 5600K, while shooting with your flashgun or in daylight (clear skies), you will get a warmer toned image.

Enough of the technical jargon, the bottom line is that if  you have one flashgun (Speedlight for Nikon users, or a Speedlite for Canon users, or whatever any other manufacturer may call their flashguns), and a soft box, then you can create a pleasing portrait in a matter of minutes. In this case, total time for this portrait from set-up to tear down and image download to Adobe Lightroom was 30 minutes or less. I think it took longer to fire up the Macintosh and launch Adobe Lightroom, then it did to shoot the photo.

 

Lighting Diagram Information for this Single Flashgun Portrait Set-up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. For this photo, I used a 3′x5′ piece of black poster board attached using two clamps to a backdrop stand and crossbar. You could use any black material or shoot into the dark, or even pull your subject far away from a wall.
2. A Nikon SB900 (or any flashgun) mounted to a 2′x2′ soft box on a light stand, positioned slightly above the subject and angled down at 45 degree’s.
3. Subject placed about 2 to 3 feet in front of the soft box and head tilted to about 30-45 degree’s away from the light. This helps produce the nice catch light in their eyes as well as the light fall off around their left side.
4. Camera with a 50mm f/1.4 lens.

5 Responses to “Studio Quality Portraits with a Single Speedlight (Flash Unit)”

1. J.C. says:

   June 22, 2011 at 3:13 pm

   Excellent post Alyn. I know the procedure for lighting may be trivial, but it’s amazing what you can do with a single camera flash these days. You don’t need a studio or expensive studio lights to achieve studio quality anymore.

   Thanks for the tutorial. Great job as always!

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     June 22, 2011 at 3:15 pm

     Thanks, J.C. really glad you got something from the article.

     Reply
2. Darrell says:

   June 29, 2011 at 8:21 am

   Fantastic tutorial chocked full of solid information. Great picture, too! Thanks Alyn!!!

   Reply
   • Alyn says:

     June 29, 2011 at 8:24 am

     You welcome Darrell.

     Reply
3. Sally says:

   July 11, 2011 at 4:04 pm

   Photography has a come a long way Alyn! What was once reserved for the studio portrait photographer, anyone can now accomplish at home. Thanks for this one! I like it! Now, I need to get myself a small soft box to try it.

   Reply