This’ll be a more technical post, kinda in the vein of the one I did with Tearschu ages ago, but the photos will still all be here.

Table of Contents

• Plans for the space
• Lighting setup
• Shooting gear
• Shooting setup
• What worked well
• What didn't work out

Suika had a spare day before flying home after SMASH, so we took the chance to fit in another shoot. I initially thought we’d wander around the CBD, but I had a hankering to get some studio time so I found a space behind Central station on Elizabeth Street. It’s got NYC loft/studio vibes which I thought would work nicely for something a bit stylish. That suits Suisei’s put-together aesthetic, though in this case it’s her “carrot legs” outfit rather than her original check-pattern uniform.

Plans for the space

The highlight for me was these windows, they bring in tonnes of natural light but the real kicker is the design. A bit… art deco, I think? These’ll make nice shapes for the background. The rest of the space has a bit of a vintage feel, which will make for a nice cosy vibe.

I’ve also managed to source, just in time, a light blue paper backdrop roll. This means we can do some nice “clean” studio shots, then go sit on all the furniture in the studio and look cool. A standard backdrop roll is 2.7m wide, but I need to schlep it around so that’s outta the question, and I settled for a half-width roll. We discussed it, and we think Sui-chan will suit a Fotolux #02 Sky Blue ‘drop

Lighting setup

This is a strictly portable setup, because it’s what I’m bringing directly from SMASH the day before. I’ve got a pair of Godox AD300’s on my stands, the main light has an AD-S85S softbox and the secondary has a smaller AD-S60S box. Both have the grid attached, at least initially.

tl;dr two strobes with gridded softboxes, one bigger and one smaller

I like these softboxes because they’re native mount for the AD300. That makes them fast to setup and packdown, and more compact because there’s no adapters involved. I can even leave them attached to the lights and just collapse the box, which makes them extra quick to deploy and stow in my lightstand bag.

Shooting gear

Nikon Zf with 50mm and 85mm. We’re in a studio so it’s f/8-and-be-there, we want ALL the depth of field.

Pentax 67 II with 105mm and 165mm. The latter has a leaf shutter, which I can sync with the strobes and shoot at a sensible shutter speed, rather than being limited to 1/30sec or slower.

I want to try as much as I can, so I brought a lot of film:

• Finish up the last few frames of Fuji Astia 100 still in the camera from Supanova
• Fuji Pro 400H, my favourite film, but it’s out of production
• Fuji Pro160NS, another film I love, also out of production
• Fuji Provia 100F, a slide film, only sold in Japan nowadays
• Kodak Ektar 100, a super sharp and saturated film

Shooting setup

It should’ve been as easy as throwing the backdrop roll on the overhead stand and starting shooting, but the weight of the paper caused the roll to keep unfurling. We managed to get it to stay with some judicious application of gaffer tape, but it’s not ideal and I put more than a few creases into the otherwise smooth paper.

Paper backdrops are strictly a consumable item so damage or creases are no big deal. But the way I was going, I could’ve gone through the whole roll before getting a completely smooth surface… I really wish I had some big clips to hold the roll in place so that didn’t happen.

Apart from that, the strobes were easy enough to dial in once I’d figured out the shooting settings. The Pentax needs 1/30sec shutter speeds for flash sync, which meant the ambient lighting was contributing to the overall exposure. Shooting at f/8 helped a lot, but it still wasn’t completely out of the equation.

What worked well

We got heaps of great photos. The strobes worked, the 1.35m-wide backdrop was big enough after all, the furniture was nice. We ran a bit over time, but aeh.

I’m happy with the film photos too, the hit rate was pretty good. The slide film is still a bit finicky and I didn’t quite nail exposure for a few frames, but it’s completely workable and looks amazing in person.

What didn’t work out

I firmly believe that failure is the best teacher, and the shoot did go great overall, but I had one big fail: I shot a whole roll of Kodak Ektar and got no pictures on it.

Part of the motivation to use a studio was to make use of the Pentax 67 II. I have a tonne of film stock and not enough opportunities to shoot it, and a studio is a good way to get plenty of keepers once you have the exposure dialed in.

I use strobes a fair bit, and the Pentax can take it, it’s got a PC sync port on the body. The catch is that the enormous shutter curtains can only flash-sync at 1/30th of a second, meaning you’re stuffed if the ambient light is too bright. One of the solutions to this is a lens with a built-in leaf shutter, with its own PC sync port. The body’s shutter curtains open, the lens’ shutter opens and triggers the strobes, then closes, then the body’s shutter curtains close.

My error here was in syncing the lens with the body; while the body can flash-sync at 1/30sec, and I used that a fair bit, it needs extra time to trip the lens shutter if you’re using one. I should’ve set the body to 1/8sec while using the leaf-shutter lens, to ensure the body’s shutter curtains are open when the leaf shutter (and flash) fires.

I was so sure that this was gonna look great, and it probably would have, but what I got was a completely unexposed roll, for a lens that I specifically wanted to test out with strobes. 😭

Guess I need to line up another studio session for a cosplay shoot…

Apart from that, the backdrop paper was kinda a mess. Not terrible, but there were a lot of creases that I had to edit out of every photo. More care during the shoot would’ve saved a lot of time in editing, which is a really good lesson. Get it right in camera, then save yourself heaps of time later on.