My Studio For Portraits On The Go

This is a photo of my studio where I take the vast majority of the Comedian portraits.

To be honest it's outside the acts room on a balcony at the Glee Club in Cardiff, the wall is off white (I quite like that.) and it does have a few marks on it but nothing a very quick touch up in Photoshop CC can't handle.

Be it winter or summer by the time I get to do a quick portrait shoot it's around 10:30 - 11:00PM more likely than not very dark out with minimum light interference from the few neon restaurant signs in the area.

My standard set up is to use an inexpensive radio trigger for my Yongnuo YN-560 ii on a light stand bracket shooting through a white umbrella.

The flash is set to 1/32 power and is set at between 24mm and 50mm depending on if I'm shooting with the Fuji X100 or the 35mm on the Fuji X-T1 with it's 1.5 crop factor making the focal length around 50mm - The flash has a pull out wide angle lens compensator that spreads the lights a little wider so shooting through the brolly with this in place gives it a unique softbox kind of look.

My cameras are always set to the lowest iso when shooting portraits to give me the best possible image quality and for the Fuji this means iso 200

I have my aperture set on F1.4 to around F3 depending on my distance from the subject which is never more than about 10ft

Ditching the bulky SLR and plumping for the Fuji system gives me an extremely lightweight and portable kit for impromptu portrait shoots before or after a gig.

I used to shoot RAW only but the JPEGS from the X100 and X-T1 are so good that I either shoot JPEG only or if I'm going for a belt and braces approach then I'll double up and shoot RAW+JPEG

Minimum editing is done in Photoshop CC and Lightroom 5.

I love the restrictions imposed on the shoots as the space is limited the background bland and I only have one light - I feel this setup really gives the subject a chance to sing.

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