Why have these images come out so badly? (Studio Lighting Q)?

By examining the image meta data it is evident that you are forced to have long exposure as well as high ISO ,1/20 and 400 somehting.

This means you need more light!

You might be able to improve it some by lowering your dept from f8 , or get a lense that can do that if the one you have doesn't go lower.

Most likely something is wrong with the intensity of your light-sources though. I've only herd good things about both your camera and your lense, as alround equipment at least.

hope this helps any

in addition to the good answers above - chief amongst which is lack of flash sync at the wrong ISO, consider that you have a lens made for under 50 quid - it will not give great results and even at say 2/3rds of its zoom (ie around 40-45mm focal length) and even stopped down to f 8 it will never give Hasselblad results.

It will also autofocus wherever it will - look at the brolly logo which is sharp (ish) whereas the model is out of focus. You could go manual focus, measure the distance to her eyes and set it manually but the scales will not be very accurate on that lens anyway.

Cheap kit badly used will not give good results, however; it can do a lot better with some effort.

Get the cam focus point to light up on her eyes. Get the rubbish out of the pic (brollies, power sockets)

Frame the shot (cut her legs off, include them, where are her hands, how far is she from the backdrop, is the power of one light about three times that of the other for modelling, or a quarter, or two times? Why? Think it through. Does the sync' really work - using test shots days before the model turns up check it and be sure of the settings, cables, connections etc.

Colour balance; put a grey card and a white page in the test shot, review afterwards and see if RGB is all 255 on the histogram on the white page.

Then only then get the model and try the shoot.

So much to do? don't panic, it'll come to you but you need to read, test, try out and be very self critical of the results.......

Firstly, your examples and what you're trying to achieve don't seem to add up.

Secondly before learning to light you should familiarise yourself with exposure. Looking at your EXIF (using EXIF Viewer add-on for Firefox), I notice you're are ISO 400, and because you're exposure is a little under, you're images are going to be noisy. Next, you're shooting people, it's hard for them to stay perfectly still, 1/25 is useable, but won't hurt to go a bit faster. Then the question is why are you shooting at f/8, with your 18-55mm the slowest part of the lens is f/5.6, portraits don't need masses of depth of field, so open up the aperture, you need to get any light in you can.

You'll also need to learn to light, while your lighting technique isn't actually causing the problems you describe, they are making the images rather bland. You need a large space for studio shots, as the model needs to be a little bit away from the background, you then have space to use use third/fourth lights (with barndoors) to throw light onto the background to kill the shadow. As you can see if working on a full length shot, you will therefore need to drape the background onto the floor too, and therefore you'll need to rig up some form of continous paper or fabric for that (improvised is OK).

Man, talk about mixing apples with oranges.... Your a studio lighting inside shooting guy and you show us a guy who shoots outdoors with a lot of available light. There is little to compare..

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The inside shots, to me, have no sparkle. They are flat and dull. She is too close to the wall. The seam at the floor is a distraction as is the power plug. The soft box in the one shot is not too bad of issue but if you wanted that shot you would now have to photo shop it out. Yes, a white wall could have done better, but if the images were brighter and had a lil more contrast it could be better.

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A new painters canvas for a back drop would work. Some are white canvas, some a light sepia tone. Double bed size un-fitted sheets can work too. What the back drop is made of is of no concern to the people looking at the finished image as long as it gives you, the photographer, what he wants.

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However, if you want your images to look more like www.yayer.co.uk - shoot outdoors...

Though you probably do not think so, the answer from Tim is the best here, though everyone has good points. However, your skill level is simply extremely lacking. We cannot try to type you a book and teach you everything you need to know about your lighting and photography skill, or rather lack thereof. Sorry, but someone placing a nice set of pots and pans in your kitchen does not mean that automatically makes you a great chef. There are many paths to studying the kinds of things you need to know. Tons of on line tutorials, videos, as well as books. You cannot just buy lights and expect them to work magic any more than you can simply buy a camera and expect it to magically produce great photographs.

You have the equipment, now is the time to start learning how to use it instead of "shooting in the dark", ... pun intended!

Good luck... you CAN do it, just stick with it and start doing that research!

steve

Looks like the flashes didn't trigger ... that looks like ambient light to me ... see how there is no shadow behind your model on the wall? She is so close to the wall that even a little light fromt he flash would have caused some shadow there ... sure, there are shadows between the legs but that's from the ambient light.

Looking at your images EXIF information, I see you are shooting this at f8 and 1/25 th and 400 ISO with no flash ...

So yeah ... you are only using ambient light here ...

It is because you do not understand the first thing about lighting.

If you question was more specific, it would be easier for us to help you, but honestly you need to go take some classes in lighting.

Your flash didn't fire. How are you triggering it?

Chris