How to Create Catalogue White: OnSet ep. 199 

Metering the back of the models head, good job! And thanks for the shout out :)

I learn more about photography from Daniel Norton in 5 minutes than I do from other photographer's seminars, which can run several hours. Thank you very much for the (always) awesome content!

She's just perfect!! great video Daniel, you explain everything you do so clearly.

You're the best. Always clear, quick and to the point. Thank you.

Much appreciated, oh wise one! THE legendary lighting guru 🙏🏽

Another excellent 6.37 mins.My 7' Westcott is white,thanks for the explanation for using silver.

Nice tutorial Daniel! I really dig all your tutorials. Makes me proud when I can replicate what you do. Thank you so much.

One of your best videos straight to the point,thanks.

Good refresher course for clothing or jewelry model for website or ECommerce. I am testing Nikon D3000 for practice product Photography and self-Portrait. Great work as always.

I learnt a lot from this tutorial Video Daniel

Thanks, Daniel and Erica. And... Hurrah, for more full-length shots! As much as I love the head shots, and see the reason for them, I do like seeing those extra details like cool clothing choices and interesting shoes. Call me old school, but I like all those extra curves in the overall form, too. You're looking happy, Erica!

"We'll do like 2 more.... " *takes 10 shots* ... my kind of shooting :) Thanks, as always, for the tips & information.

To get even lighting on the background, does your left B1X light the left hand side, and the right one the right, or do you criss-cross them?

Great pro-tip on metering the light behind the model to check the bounce light from the background for flair. I usually make sure the model is a good 6-8 feet away from the white background to reduce the risk of flair as well. Also, you could have increased the power on the background light on the side opposite to the umbrella by half a stop and then decreased the power half a stop on the background light that is on the same side of the umbrella. This would have given you a more even lighting exposure on the background.

Excellent tut. Everything that Daniel says is 100%. I wanted to add something that may be overlooked. Throwing light onto background to get right in camera, may seem like the correct way to shoot this type of shot... speed whole process up and limit post work. However, when light is coming from the background, whether from background lights shown here, or even reflected light from the key light... this is going to strike the edge of model and garment. And this is fine if model is going to remain on white background. But if model is going to be deep etched, and then placed on a background that isnt pure white, some issues may arise. The light that is striking edge of model from the background, is not going look correct in this case. To get around this, it is sometimes better to shoot with mid to light grey as background, so there is minimum light striking edge of model. They can still be deep etched to be placed on white background, but also placed on a variety of tones without looking out of place.

Great video your video always help me to shoot better

Great model, great video. Did you set the meter to match ISO on the camera? I usually shoot with a Fuji X-T2, and I find that base ISO 200 is closer to ISO 100. So if the meter matches the camera ISO, I'm underexposed by about a stop. I think the ISO discrepancies between camera brands is one of the reasons a lot of newer photographers just skip using the flash meter.

very educational....appreciate the great video!

Great vid Daniel.

Great video! You have a DSLR, with her moving constantly, your camera on a tripod, where is your focus point? (On the eye...or with F8 on the waist, so the eyes could be in focus?) Your photo-taking speed is quite high so you don't change focus point?

Is minimal post processing done? Am I right in assuming that the client is expecting you to be producing a huge amount of images for the catalogue layout.

Does the umbrella have any diffusion?

Great video Daniel. Love that umbrella and appreciate the explanation about getting the details and Black blacks vs. grey. How’s that savage multiflex stand holding up?

I just remembered something from when I had a much smaller studio space than today. It's a technique that can work for you if you have a reasonably wide studio space but lacks depth and it only requires a couple of V-flats (two large foam-boards taped together in the middle). Perhaps it could be of use to some, I don't know - but here goes anyway: I would place the V-flats slightly behind the model and just out of frame, and open them up to around 90-120 degrees with the tape seam pointing forward and the white surface pointing backwards. Then I would position my two background flashes almost at the background, firing into the open V-flat so the light would bounce back on the background in a huge, pretty even wash of light. There would be two advantages to this method: 1) You will not get any hot spots on the background. I think it was J. P. Morgan who made a video showing that no matter the size of your modifier, the falloff from the center of the light is almost the same at a given distance when lighting a flat wall. Basically this means that you will almost always have a hot spot right behind the model (potentially causing flare) and have falloff at the edges. Shooting into V-flats will bounce the light around inside the V-flat before reflecting it on the background and make the reflected light much less prone to hot spots. 2) Less space required between model and background. Even when using standard reflectors (which gives you a pretty directional light) you have to be careful not to have any spill from your background flashes onto the sides of the model, so the distance from model to background is largely dictated by the distance required from the flash to background in order to have a sufficient spread of light to create a reasonably even light across the entire background. There are two (perhaps three) disadvantages to this method: 1) It requires quite a lot more space on both sides of the model - those V-flats are not small and the flashes will usually go even further out to the side of the background. 2) Reflecting light from a white surface eats up a portion of the light, and on top of that, the distance from your flash (positioned at the background, pointing forward) to the V-flat and back to the background is probably longer than when shooting directly at the background - lack of distance was kinda the idea behind this. Both of this means that you will need a more powerful flash to pull this off - but still, a 400-600 Ws unit should do fine. 3) Depending on you V-flat, you may suddenly have a black surface almost directly beside your model (most V-flats a black on one side and white on the other), and that may not be what you want - it will deepen the shadows on the side of the models face and clothing to some extent. It may not be a problem, but it is something to be aware of, though. Also, be careful not to have any of the light from the background flashes hit your model or your camera lens - the V-flats must perform cover for both or you will have either unwanted rim light on the model or potentially flare in your lens.

Daniel, I couldn't understand what you said at 2:28. Sounded like "and it reads 5, 6, 9. That's f8, basically". That part was confusing. Otherwise, another brilliant OnSet.

Daniel, thanks for this video. Your lighting video are always great. I have a question: you metered the background as f8, and you metered her face as f5.6. Which f-stop did you use? F5.6or f8?

Excellent Daniel, thank you. Please tell me why you didn’t use your Scrim Jim?

quick and fine! Greetings from Berlin ;-)

Hi Daniel! Thanks for all your videos, they help a lot! I have a question, if you don't mind, which file you deliver to the customer? I mean, is it Jpg, is TIFF, wich quality? Thanks a lot man!

Nice tutorial, Any idea why when I up my shutter speed above 1/250 the image turn black? I using Elinchrom 500 ELC pro HD. thanks you

Thanks Daniel, are the white flecks (lint I guess) that were on the black dress something that you'd deal with before delivering the files, are they an accepted part of clothing, or would someone clean up the clothing first?

Really nice Tips! Also that You mentioned Gavin 😀 was helpful. I learn from You both! Erica is a really good model, also a nice Insta Account!

Measures f/8.0 on the background. Measures f/8.0 on the model. Capture One shows that you shoot at f/7.1 the whole shoot. You rebel, you! ;) In all seriousness, that is probably the right way to shoot a catalogue shoot - in general you do want that extra brightness and crispness, and had you shot at f/8 you would have had your background show up even further down the histogram than you already have. It would not be a disaster, but essentially you would be giving up some dynamic range once you correct the background to complete white in post production. Personally I think that it's already a bit low for a white background for my taste, but like you said, too much light off the background will cause flare, and from your previous videos it is clear that you don't have much leeway in terms of moving everything further away from the background to reduce the light from it hitting the model. Nice video and very well laid out - all the info is there and is very easily understandable.

great how to video! Gives me some creative ideas for videos for my channel! :)

Daniel, you're fortunate to have such lovely, shapely models. Can't find them in my part of the country. Erica is simply beautiful! I have to go back and watch this again to make sure I'm understanding the setup, but is the umbrella the 7 footer? Also, haven't seen Marisa in your videos, or 'Adorama lives' lately, is she still helping you? Miss seeing her 'down to earth' style! :) Oops! I went back and listened again and this time caught the 7' umbrella comment. LOL!

Great video but I do have a question. I use Lightroom and I don't know much about Capture One. You used two lights on the background and set it at F8. Is that really a true white background? If you look at the intro pic on the email it's not a least not on that pic. It's close but not a true white. What settings would you use to make it a true white without it spilling back on the model? Or, is that what a "catalogue white" should look like? I see so many videos, not yours, and they put a light on the background and say it's a white background. Not even close. Thanks for the help. I really like your videos and I think Gavin Hoey rocks too!

🙌🏻

Any reason why you were focusing the camera on the outfit and not on, say her eyes?

I had to turn my screen right up to get white on your back wall tbh.

Always good to learn from you, but please try to speek a litttle bit slower !!! For us, non native English speaker, it is sometime very complicate to follow you and most of the time, I give it up. Anyway, thanks !

f/8 on background and also on her face to get a catalog white? something is wrong!

Why not over-expose the background a bunch more? Surprised to see the right end of the histogram with a full "hill" rather than it peaking at 100%. I'd think tweaking down the exposure in post would result in a gray (or worse, colored) background. For that matter, if you way-over-expose your background (beyond the dynamic range of your sensor), you could make any color wall "white". (But, as you note, beware of bounce, particularly off a colored wall, the reflections will be colored and not over-exposed, even if the wall is.) Last comment/question, I assume you would still white balance with a target, not the wall...