Black and White Editorial Portraits: 4 Lighting Setups with the Godox AD600ProII

Black and White Editorial Portraits: 4 Lighting Setups with the Godox AD600ProII

By Conrad Knuist · Head of Marketing and Photography Specialist · Godox Specialist · 18+ years in photography

Black and white portrait photography rewards contrast, depth, and deliberate light shaping in ways that colour photography can hide. There is nowhere to run when the image is stripped of colour: the light either works or it does not. The Godox AD600ProII is built for exactly this kind of demanding work, delivering 600Ws of consistent, controllable output with rapid recycling and full TTL support across the major camera systems.

In this tutorial, Canadian photographer and educator Nathan Elson walks through four distinct setups, starting from a single light and building in complexity with each look. The final look introduces mixed flash and constant lighting in bulb mode to create motion effects that produce a completely unique image on every single shutter press. All four setups are shot with the AD600ProII and the Godox X3 trigger.

CameraStuff is an authorised Godox dealer in South Africa with the full range in stock, backed by local 2-year warranty support.

Why Black and White Portrait Photography Demands More from Your Lighting

When you photograph in colour, the image carries multiple layers of visual information simultaneously: hue, saturation, contrast, and tone all contribute to how a viewer reads the image. Black and white removes three of those four. What remains is tonal contrast, which means the quality and direction of your light becomes the primary language the image speaks in. Flat or frontal lighting that would look acceptable in colour becomes obviously dull in black and white because the tonal separation between highlights and shadows collapses. You lose the three-dimensional quality that makes a portrait feel real.

This is why photographers who work seriously in black and white tend to light with more intention than those working in colour. The modifiers they choose, the distance between the light and the subject, the direction of the light relative to the subject's face: all of these decisions are more consequential when colour is not there to compensate. A large modifier feathered carefully across a subject can give you a gradual and convincing tonal range from highlight to shadow across the face and body. A harsh, direct source creates hard shadows. An optical snoot creates focused, sharp-edged pools of light. Each choice produces a different image, and in black and white, every choice is visible.

The AD600ProII's 600Ws output gives you the headroom to run large modifiers at distances that produce beautiful, gradual light falloff without needing to push your camera's ISO. The recycling speed means you can work at a pace that matches a live portrait session without waiting for the flash to catch up between shots.

Principles of light and shadow in photography and visual art, per Wikipedia: Chiaroscuro.

Black and white photography as a medium and its technical conventions, as documented by Wikipedia: Black-and-white Photography.

The Four Setups: How Each Look Was Built

Nathan structures the tutorial as a progressive build: each setup adds something to the previous one, so the logic of each decision is easier to follow. You can shoot all four looks in a single session, and by the end you have four distinctly different sets of images from one studio, one subject, and one primary light.

Look 1: One Light, Large Octabox, Feathered

The AD600ProII is fitted with a 120cm octabox and feathered across the model. Feathering means the model is positioned in the outer third of the modifier, not the centre, allowing the light to travel across the face and body in a gradual transition from highlight to shadow rather than falling flat. The white studio wall behind the model falls off to a mid-grey, creating natural background separation in black and white without needing a separate background light. Settings: f8, 1/200s, ISO 200.

Conrad's Advice

What is "feathering?" Big modifier, position the subject at the back third of the modifier. That's the whole trick. Stop centering your subject and let the light wrap.

Look 2: Two Lights, Key and Fill

The same key light stays in place. A second AD600ProII with a large umbrella is added as a fill light. The fill solves a specific problem: dark clothing, specifically a black trench coat, was losing all its texture and detail under the single key. The umbrella adds a softer, broader fill that brings back the fabric's detail and lightens the shadows on the face and body, all without removing the directional quality of the key. Settings remain f8, 1/200s, ISO 200.

Look 3: Three Lights, Optical Snoot, and a Dirty Frame

Nathan keeps the same two-light setup from Look 2 and adds an optical snoot as a third source, positioned to come from the same general direction as the octabox key. This creates a small, hard circle of light that overlaps the softer key light. The combination of hard and soft from the same direction produces sharper shadow edges on the face and a light and shadow pattern on the background wall that adds visual depth. He also deliberately leaves light stands and an old tungsten housing visible in the frame, using them as compositional elements that make the image feel more industrial and interesting rather than cleaning up for a clinical studio look.

Look 4: Mixed Lighting, Bulb Mode, Motion Effect

This setup is the most technically specific of the four, and every step in the sequence matters. The room needs to be dark: all studio and room lights off, windows blocked. The AD600ProII stays as the key with the octabox, but the modeling light must be turned off. The flash will freeze the model's face at the moment of firing, but if the modeling light is left on, the constant light bleeds into the long exposure and spreads across the face, ruining the freeze. Two constant panel lights with barndoors are positioned aimed at the back and sides of the model, not the front. These constant lights create the motion trails during the long exposure. Camera is set to bulb mode at f11, ISO 100. Press the shutter, move the camera in any direction for 2 to 3 seconds, and the combination of the flash-frozen face and the constant-light motion produces an image that cannot be replicated exactly twice.

Conrad's Advice

Modeling light off. Non-negotiable. Leave it on and the motion smears across the face and you've wasted the shot. Kill it, move the camera, and enjoy the chaos.

Long exposure photography and the technical principles behind shutter speed and motion, per Wikipedia: Long-exposure Photography.

Studio portrait lighting techniques and the role of light modifiers, as documented by Wikipedia: Portrait Photography.

Getting More from Each Setup

Background Distance Controls Tonal Value

Nathan makes an important practical point in Look 1: the brightness of the background is directly controlled by how far the subject and the light stand are from it. A subject and light close to the background will produce a brighter, lighter grey wall. Move both further back and the wall gets darker. This is one of the most underused tools in single-light B&W work. You can create a range of background tones, from near-white to near-black, with the same white wall and the same light, just by adjusting distance. Worth testing during your next studio shoot before you reach for a background paper roll.

Why the Hard and Soft Light Combination Works in Look 3

Combining a hard and soft source from the same general direction might seem counterproductive, but it produces a specific result that neither source achieves alone. The large octabox gives you the gradual, wrapping tonal range. The optical snoot adds a sharper edge to specific shadows without overriding the overall quality of the key. The result reads as more three-dimensional and more detailed than either source would on its own. The light and shadow thrown onto the wall behind the subject is a bonus that adds depth to the background without needing a separate background light.

Deliberate Camera Movement in Look 4

Nathan tried several types of camera movement during Look 4, including sliding backwards on a rolling chair. The direction and distance of camera movement during the bulb exposure directly determines the shape of the motion trails. Moving straight back produces a zoom effect. Moving sideways produces horizontal streaks. Moving in an arc produces curved trails. None of these is inherently better than the others, and you will likely need 15 to 20 frames to find the movement that feels right for a specific composition. The lack of repeatability is the point.

Our Verdict on the Godox AD600ProII for Portrait Work

The AD600ProII earns its place as the primary working light in a serious portrait setup because it handles everything from clean one-light editorial work to technically demanding mixed-light experiments without asking you to change your approach or your accessories. The 600Ws output gives you enough power to work through large modifiers at reasonable distances, the recycling speed keeps up with live portrait sessions, and the Bowens mount means every quality modifier you already own works with it.

Nathan's tutorial makes a strong practical case for the unit not by reviewing its spec sheet but by running it through four different setups in a real shoot and showing what each combination produces. The fact that Look 4 is possible with this light, specifically because of its ability to turn off the modeling light and fire cleanly in bulb mode as a pure freezing flash, points to the kind of thoughtful engineering that distinguishes professional lighting from entry-level gear. CameraStuff carries the AD600ProII with local stock, 2-year warranty, and 60-day returns.

Specifications

Godox AD600ProII

As specified by the manufacturer. Source: Godox.