How I Got the Shot – Golden Hollywood

I recently had the opportunity to try out the new Canon 5D Mark IV before its release to test how it captured color, detail and movement.

 Concept & Styling

For this shoot I wanted to channel a a little bit of old hollywood and make an image that was all about golden tones. Thankfully I had a great team to help achieve this look, Johnny Gonzales gave the perfect look for hair and make up and wardrobe stylist Lisa Smith Craig picked out the perfect dress to help capture the movement that I was going for in the scene.

 Gear

As mentioned, I chose the Canon 5DS Mark IV and Canon 24-70mm combo for this shoot as the rich details that the 5D picks up are second to none and the wider lens choice would allow me to be more versatile and adjust my frame for this full length shot.

Because color is so essential for this shoot I grabbed my X-Rite Color Checker Passport to make sure that my colors were accurate in post.

Lighting

For this scene I used two Profoto D1 Air 500w strobes. My main light was a big soft light source that allowed my subject to glow. I chose a Profoto Deep Umbrella White XL with diffusion and then added a black v-flat to block light from the background. For the second strobe I added a 20 degree grid which would give a little bit of glow on the beautiful hand painted Muslin background (use code LINDSAY10 to save 10% at Seamlessphoto.com).

 Cinemagraph

A cinemagraph is a living photo. It’s a still where a part of the image is moving and really brings it to life. I wanted to try out the 5D iV’s dual pixel auto focus feature and this would be perfect to try out for this cinemagraph. So I shot on a tripod and tried moving a varity of different elements, sometimes the dress or hair or hands.

Here’s the final:

Archiving & Workflow

To keep things speedy and secure I rely on G-Technology to handle all of my back up needs. For taking my files on the go I use the G-Tech ev RaW and then move them over to my G-SPEED Studio XL for final archiving with more than 18tb of raid space.

I put the 5d4 through it’s paces and was able to get a beautiful final image with rich golden tones and great detail and a really enchanting cinemagraph.