Best settings for truly black portrait backdrops

I'm preparing for my first baby session with my D600 (continuing a monthly photo project with my daughter) and I was hoping for some advice on the best combination of settings and equipment to get truly black-appearing backdrops. With my old Canon "SLR-like" camera I found that either the subject looked dark or the backdrop looked charcoal grey instead of a true black and had to be darkened in Lightroom later. I never attempted studio portraits with my OM-1.

I've gotten some great shots with the D600 on light backgrounds, but somehow the blacks end up looking dull and flat instead of rich and inviting. So what is the best way to set things up to get a well-lit baby with a really rich, saturated black background without having to tweak it later?

If tweaking is necessary no matter what, should I be saving my images as RAW files and upgrading to LR5?

I use a large piece of black fleece as a backdrop. Should I try a different backdrop? I want to stick with black for continuity, but would a different material work better?

So far I have tried shooting indoors without flash in a room with lots of natural light (subject was too dark) and outdoors just after sunset (subject perfectly lit, but backdrop washed out). I'm considering switching to using studio lights since it rains here all summer and it's freezing in the winter... Would that help? I think I want continuous rather than strobe lighting (to avoid spooking baby), but would shoot-through umbrellas or stand-mounted soft boxes give better results? Where should they be positioned?

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for the immense amount of wisdom that I'm sure is about to head my way!

The main thing is to keep all light off the background. Not easy but try to keep the subject as far away from the background as possible.

Shoot in RAW and when processing you can change the Black levels and shadow detail to help make the background truly black.Just be careful not to carry it so far as to darken the Baby.

Make sure the background in FLAT black and has no shine to it at all.

One way to do this is to shoot your background and stop down your lens until the background is black. This will entail finding the right placement for both your camera and light sources. Then set your subject location to properly expose the subject.

If you really want black, you may have to ditch the fleece and try velvet or a black photo background, as well. You're almost certain to get not get a black background if using ambient lighting for both subject and background.

WM

Thanks for the info!

I'll look into black photo backgrounds and black velvet. I think I'll switch to something light-colored when we hit 12mos, but I would really like the first year to be consistent. In retrospect, maybe black wasn't the best choice, but it was what I had on-hand when she was tiny!

What light sources work best for lighting the subject while keeping light off the background? Or is it more about placement?

I shot this of myself a couple of weeks back to check out a black background (and also draped a black blanket around me). Lighting was an SB-800 shot through a 24" softbox about 1' from me on my right. D600 w/ 70-200 2.8 VRII ISO 200, f/4, 1/80 sec. Manual flash @ 1/8. Virtually no ambient light.

I would say to be at least 4 feet in front of the background no light hitting the background or directly hitting the background is best. I use continuous lighting mixed with the flash continuous lighting pointed at the back of the subjects and continuous lighting hair light

I've gotten a few really great ones and a few where the background looks too bright, in the same shoot with the same settings, and taken just seconds apart! Digging through the data in Lightroom, I can't seem to find any connection to aperture, shutter speed, focal length, or anything else. I wish I could figure out what I'm doing right on the ones that turn out looking so great!

​In the meantime, maybe I'll try a velvet background...

Perhaps you accidentally turned on bracketing? You could check Exposure Bias in the EXIF data. Something is causing the pictures to be different. Let's find out what you were doing wrong on the bad ones. Something in the pictures and the EXIF data has the answer.

​Jim

I don't think I turned on bracketing, but I'm not sure where to look for that in the data. I'm in lightroom 3 (waiting for my new copy of lightroom 5 to come in), and I see information on the exposure, lens, ISO rating, etc but nothing about Exposure Bias. Where should I look for that?

Would it help if I posted a good and a bad side-by-side? Maybe it's something about the picture composition? Or maybe I should try a different metering setting?

Here's a screen shot of the EXIF data from Lightroom 4. It should be similar in Lightroom 3. It's been so long since I used 3, I can't remember. Click on the pic to enlarge.

Got it! I was only seeing the "default" metadata.

Looking at the EXIF data for a good image and a bad image, here's what I see:
Good image: Subject fills most of the frame (head shot), 1/30sec exposure at f/4.5, 0EV exposure bias, ISO 6400, pattern metering mode
Bad image shot a few seconds later: full-length image with subject centered in frame, 1/13 sec at f/4.2, 0EV exposure bias, ISO 6400, pattern metering mode

The only differences that I see are composition and shutter speed.

Is the pattern metering mode possibly causing a problem when the subject doesn't fill most of the frame?

Is your ISO really at 6400? It seems abit excessive to me.

I don't know what Pattern metering mode is. The choices for metering are Matrix (Camera meters a wide area of the frame and set exposure according to tone distribution, color, composition ), center weighted (Camera meters entire frame but assigns greatest weight to center area) and spot ( Camera meters circle 4 mm (0.16 in.) in diameter (approximately 1.5% of frame).) I agree with Dave that ISO 6400 might be a bit extreme, unless you're in extreme low light conditions.

The ISO really was 6400 - I was shooting indoors with ambient light only and the widest aperture my lens could give me at a 50mm focal length was 4.2-4.5. Even then I ended up with a lot of fairly slow shutter speeds (1/13sec or so). This is why I just ordered a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G and an SB-700 + shoot-through umbrella and stand. Looking forward to getting some time to play with those soon! Now I just have to figure out how to use bouncing flash or the umbrella setup to get a bit more light on my subject without totally washing out my background.

While Lightroom says "Pattern," looking at the actual camera I'm in matrix mode. Maybe this is the problem? The dark background is tricking the camera into over-exposing the images when the subject takes up less than half of the frame? This might explain why the shots that look the best are the ones where the subject takes up more than about 75% of the frame. Maybe spot would work better?

I think you'll have much better luck with spot metering. I also suspect using spot you'll be able to lower your ISO a bit. Question - are you using a tripod? And does your lens have VR?

I'll try spot.

The lens I used for the last batch of pictures (28-300mm f/3.5-5.6) has VR, the 50mm f/1.8G doesn't. The blur issues have been less because of me moving the camera and more because of the baby moving her arms and legs all over the place!

I don't use a tripod because, to get really good angles on the baby, I'm often down on my stomach at or near her eye level. Those always end up being the shots where she looks the most like a person instead of a blob!

Here is a good technique from Scott Kelby without even using a background.

3 Steps To A Creative Portrait In A Less Than Ideal Environment | Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider

That's really cool! I don't think my subject will sit still for that, though

gqtuazon said:

Here is a good technique from Scott Kelby without even using a background.

3 Steps To A Creative Portrait In A Less Than Ideal Environment | Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider

Click to expand...

Good info in there, thanks Glenn

Tapp'n on the Galaxy S3