Lens: Voigtlander nokton 50mm f1.1
Camera: NEX-7, ISO100, f11, 1/125, raw
Yesterday I opened saying: “If destiny is talking to me, right now, it is doing it in Klingon”. Well, after a lot of studying on the official website of the Klingon Language Institute, and careful listening to the destiny whispers, I think I finally got a few of the words currently spoken by my destiny, and their scary meaning. “Dugh Doq ‘ej wovbe’ ‘IqnaH Jev”, literally “Be vigilant brown mucus storm”… I guess the subtle message here is quite clear, sin’t it? Joking aside, I really got into what seems to be a little shit storm and I have to deal with the situation before I can even talk about it. So, I should use the rest of this post to describe the shot.
I wanted to play with glasses reflections. Fact is, if you use studio lights to portrait people wearing glasses you have three options: 1) you don’t pay much attention and end up with weird and partial softbox/umbrella/beauty dish reflections; 2) you position the lights so that the lenses of the glasses are out of the lights’ “family of angles”; 3) you position one of the lights so that each point of the lenses of the glasses is within the lights’ “family of angles”. In the first case you won’t have any reflection (of the lights) at all, while in the second case you’ll have the whole surface of the lenses evenly reflecting the diffuser.
The latter is the case I opted for in this shot. I used a strobe hanging over me as hair light, equipped with a 60x60cm softbox, and another strobe right under my chin equipped with the large 120x80cm softbox. Since this self portrait required precise positioning of all the lights, I connected the video output of the NEX-7 to a 17-inch high-def monitor through hdmi. The video connection offers both a very effective “through the lens” view and large a high definition preview of each shot, which can even be zoomed in to check the precise focus. All of this, of course, given that you have the little sony remote, which doesn’t come with the NEX-7. I already got one with the alpha 900, but I guess I would include it within the must have accessories of any nex owner (well, if your nex is compatible with the remote, off course!)
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