Matt Granger trick to nullify background -is it right way ?

[rahullele]

While going through off camera tutorial by Matt Granger (The nikon guy or the intimate portraiture famous) .. He repeatedly explained one technique he followed. 

When you are going to add flash (or additional external light) to image (or composition) .. if you are clear what you want .. then change camera setting to make background appear total dark.

Example.. Correct background exposure is .. F/1.4, ISO 800 1/30th sec. Then you change setting to F /8 , ISO 100 , 1/120th .. There by losing 8 stop of light and your picture becomes total dark. Histogram goes total dark on left side. Then you add flash and put on subject of interest ... and adjust your exposure to it. .. 

Flaw on plan is .. usually single flash never gives you enough power to light up correctly and add 8 stops only to subject ... so you have to pull light settings for more exposure and the background is never more than 5 stop less light .. Now when .. by the technique when you pull exposure and shadows sliders to correct position, background shows up. 

Question is .. what Matt is trying to explain .. is that practice adjustment and treat is as such and use other means to achieve total black background...  

or its fair to use this technique as the means to achieve no background ? Treat exposure and shadows sliders to achieve your means instead of doing by the book ?

 

[Damien Symonds]

Hi Rahul, I've moved this question into Brian's section, because I've seen him talk about this frequently.

[Brian]

Can you provide a link to the video in question? You are correct, your typical flash is not powerful enough to over-power the Sun. There is also the Inverse Square Law to deal with so I really need to see what voodoo he is trying to sell. 

 

[rahullele]

Link below. By first 7 mins he kind of explains it. Couple of points. 

1. I bought this before zach arias tutorial. As i said in earlier post, there is no comparison between him and zach arias.

2. But Zach is white seamless guy .. my liking kind of lies in exact opposite color for background. 

3. All i've is at the moment is 18x18 and 7 foot high hall of condo .. All i'm trying to do is .. darken background .. which i love. in the set up I've. and i'm snuggling and trying to see what i can do. 

 

 

[Brian]

The reason that Zack is a white seamless guy is the type of Photographer he is: A Commercial,  Editorial and Corporate Photographer. If you go into any supermarket, take a look at their magazine section. 95% of the Magazine Covers will have a person / model on a white background. It’s easy for the Graphic Artist doing stuff to work with a white background. If you have enough room, you can turn a white background to a grey one or even make it black, all by positioning of your lights and the distance between your subject and background.

What’s killing you is your lack of room. Especially 7’ High ceilings. The light is just going to bounce around. What you want is 20’ High Ceilings.  So you might want to invest in a seamless black / gray background. 

Thanks for the link I will watch it later on my computer.