DIY: Portraits with Christmas Lights

It's the holiday season, but to be honest....who can feel jolly with all this strange weather. Wandering around the office looking for inspiration, I walked in on some kind of holiday miracle that was probably inspired by the result of someone giving up their attempt at unraveling a mess of Christmas lights. The look on my face must have been something of confusion and awe, but next thing I knew I was the test subject for a strange lighting experiment.

Always one to challenge the conventional, Unique University Instructor Taryn was determined to make her life a little more difficult: What if you used normal everyday Christmas lights for as your only lights for a studio portrait? Anyone would be kind of skeptical of the setup...Hanging from a background stand was a long strand of icicle lights that would serve as a illuminated backdrop and to my side a porcupine-looking mass of tangled lights on a stand served as a fill. Breaking it down to a science experiment we had the constant for our experiment and now needed the independent variables. Taryn tried three different lenses to compare which would work better with this unusual setup. The lenses used were Canon's 85mm f/1.2, 70-200 f/2.8, and a Sigma 120-300 f/2.8. Since the 85mm is a faster lens, she shot from f/1.4-2.8, while the others were shot wide open at 2.8. Considering the light output from these decorations aren't all that strong, ISO was set at 1600 to match a shutter speed of 1/100th of a second to prevent shake. Soooo, let's see how her experiment turned out!

85mm

Since this lens has the widest aperture of the bunch, you can see the vast difference of the light's bokeh. The bulbs go from giant glowing blobs to innocuous looking circles that almost simulate snow. Shooting wide open also has the tendency to leave such a shallow depth of field that you'll only get a part of the face in focus. While it can definitely give a different look, we liked the the shot taken at f/2.8 since it gives a nice balance of sharpness and background blur.

85mm f/1.4 vs f/1.8

85mm f/2.0 vs f/2.8

70-200

At f/2.8 from the same distance, depth of field appears more shallow than the 85mm.  To get the shot with roughly the same framing Tayrn had to stand back a considerable distance. That distance compacts the subject and background gives a little more depth which makes the lights in the second shot seem look more obvious.

200mm f/2.8 close up and a few feet back

120-300

Similar to the previous test the increased focal length creates more depth of field, but bokeh is rendered a little differently from the first two. With a few steps back you can see the lights become more defined. One would think the focal length affects the exposure, but as long as the light hits the subject at the same distance with the same magnification, the exposure should remain the same. Oh, inverse square law, you confusing silly thing.

 270mm f/2.8 close up and a few steps back

After we were done with me looking longingly into this mass of tangled lights, someone had the bright idea to stand behind the "background" and shoot through the lights. I think everyone agreed that this was more successful than the original setup as there wasn't such a dramatic Rembrandt lighting going on. The lights that peak into the frame even add a little something to an otherwise typical portrait.

85mm 1/200 f1.2

There you go! Just goes to show that you don't always have to break the bank for strobes to get studio quality portraits. Is this the most practical lighting set up? No way. Did I have fun being the model. Of course I did.

If anything I got a cool Facebook picture out of it!