HP Labs Technical Reports

Professional Portrait Studio for Amateur Digital Photography

Beretta, Giordano

HPL-97-164

Keyword(s): digital camera; portrait photography; lamp; electronic imaging

Abstract: We describe how to build a professional portable portrait studio that can be used with any consumer camera. The studio allows effortless off-line chroma- key insertion of backgrounds. Digital consumer cameras are designed for delivering acceptable images in typical outdoor or small room situations. The cameras fail when tungsten filament lamps are used. The built- in flash tube is too weak to fill the background in a studio setting and cannot be used to trigger professional electronic-flash lamps because the camera's firmware computes the exposure under the assumption that only the built-in flash tube supplies light to the scene when it is activated. A further problem is the position of the lamps. In the case of digital cameras the position is much more delicate than for silver halide film cameras because the sensor's dynamic range is very small and unwanted shadows are easily created. We present two different lamp set-ups for different size rooms.

10 Pages

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