274-2020 – Panda Bear Plush Toy

Today’s photo of the day, part of “a photo a day challenge 2020”, is about my daughter’s Panda Bear Plush Toy on a black background.

This images started with a black background and a white surface made of polystyrene. I was intrigued by the contrast and challenged myself to capture a black and white object in this environment. If you look closely in the toy’s eyes you can see where I got the lighting setup idea.

Three-point lighting setup

In order to achieve this setup I needed 3 lights. I had the back light (Elinchrom D-lite 400 flash head with a snoot) already setup from a previous shoot, and only needed the key light and fill light. I setup another Elinchrom D-lite 400 flash head inside a large softbox to be used as key light, to realise that I don’t have the power cable. Plan B was to use the softbox as a reflector and use the speedlight shooting through an umbrella as the keylight. I positioned the key light on the left side as you look at the toy. See image below.

Technically, now I am using two lights and a reflector, this is how it should look like.

Equipment used

• 1 x Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• 1 x Canon Speedlight 600EX-RT
• 1 x Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM
• 1 x YONGNUO YN-E3-RT Wireless Speedlight Transmitter
• 1 x Transcend 64GB SDXC/SDHC Class 10 (Premium) Memory Card
• 1 x Manfrotto Tripod with video head
• 1 x Creativity Photographic Studio Background Paper 2.72m wide x 11m long (Black)
• 3 x Light stands
• 1 x Elinchrom D-Lite 400 flash head with Snoot
• 1 x Umbrella
• 1 x Softbox

Again, I am not saying that this is what you need to take a similar photo, but this is what I decided to use to capture this image.

Camera settings

• Exposure: 1/200 sec at f/11
• Focal Lenght: 165mm
• ISO Speed Rating: ISO 100

Post Processing

I used Lightroom Classic and kept the editing to a minimum, darken the background, brighten the foreground. The toy’s left paw was a bit too dark so I brighten it a little bit to stand out from the background and that was it.

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