I had a couple shoots this week. So today I finally got the chance to use my new Ray Flash ring light. I’ll jump the gun and spill the beans right away: I’m happy with the results.  Now that that’s out of the way I’ll walk you through the shoot.

Lately I have been favoring the white seamless paper (by Savage always ordered from B&H) for portrait shoots and that is what I’m using for this shoot. Young Griffin is turning 5 next week, and these pictures will be distributed to friends and family. I often shoot children in this younger age bracket and know from experience that you only have their co-operation for a limited time, but Griffin was willing to let me fire off a few production shots.

First you can see the two monolights at either side. They are wearing their soft boxes and facing each other, only gently spilling onto the backdrop if at all. On a commercial set you would probably see egg crate grids covering the soft boxes to eliminate the spill completely. This setup works for what we aim to accomplish.

Production Shot:Monolights

Just ignore the Wii-mote. We have our lights. Check. We have the seamless roll. Check. This shot above  is all ambient. The light bleeding in from the windows has no real impact on the whole lighting setup. You’ll see in the next shot Griffin is holding a light meter to make sure of it. This was shot on program but for the actual shots I am shooting with a D200 (waiting for the announcement of the D900 or whatever Nikon will call the new Full-Frame HD Video DSLR beast) @ f/13 and 1/125th. The D200 is also equipped with a SB-900 and my brand new Ray Flash.

Here we see Griffin holding a Sekonic L-358 so I can get a reading from the SB-900 equipped Ray Flash.

Griffin holding Sekonic L-358

Griffin holding Sekonic L-358

Production Shot:Ray Flash + SB-900 only

Once the Ray Flash was good to go, I took shoots that show the effect of adding each light to the equation.

I began with the monolight on camera left.

Production Shots:The Monolight @ Camera Left

Nice, dramatic lighting but we dont stop here.

Now we invite the other side to come and play.

Production Shots:The Monolight @ Camera Left + Right

Here we have the highlights on the side where we want them, and slowly rolling over from each side toward the center where we will get our fill from the RayFlash/SB-900.

Now we will put it all together and see the magic.

Ray Flash brings the Fill

Wider shot = Full Length

Ignore the “Camo” Band-Aid and you have a nice High Quality portrait.

Below are some of the best shoots within our window of co-operation.