A few more things:
1. OP:
"... The reason for the lights being so close is because of my studio is in a tight space ..."
No knowledgeable studio photographer would ever consider your lights particularly "close" given the sizes of the modifiers and the fact that you are shooting head-and-shoulder portraits. A light is considered "close" if the distance between the light and the subject is is less than the size of the light's exit aperture (ie, the size of the front of the softbox or umbrella).
I am suggesting that you actually move at least the key light even closer to the subject in order to have better control over the illumination of the subject.
If you want a very specific recommendation, now that I have a better idea of what you are working with, I would suggest making the light on our right (the one with the small softbox) your key light and moving it in to about 2.5 or 3 feet away from the subject. For the time being, leave the light on our left (the one with the big modifier) where it is (ie, as a fill light), but dial it's power waaaay down till you get the desired lighting ratio on the face.
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2. OP:
"...anyways, the ratio I had was actually what you said but it looks too overexposed on the side..."
When a lighting ratio such as 3:1 is stated, it means the ratio of light intensities on the subject, ie, AS MEASURED ON THE SUBJECT (say, with a flash meter). All you did was dial in a 3:1 power input ratio to the lights. Everything that happens to the light after it leaves each of the flash units, particularly, bouncing around and absorption (both in your light modifiers and in the room), spread with distance, etc. will all change the 3:1 ratio that you dialed in by the time all the light eventually makes it's way to the subject.
If you don't have a flash meter, just use your own eyes to judge the lighting ratio. Do any of the images you posted look like a 3:1 ratio at the subject? No! The L and R sides of the face are all almost equally lit. In addition, in contrast to what you said, neither side of the faces in any of those images is even close to being overexposed (xcept for tiny areas of specular reflection, such as the catchlights in the eyes, glints on the teeth, etc.).
In a small room like that, and with the sources that far from the subject, one always gets huge amounts of spill from one side to the other because of light bouncing off the ceiling and other surfaces. The only way to get up to a 3:1 L-R ratio is move at least the key light source in closer.
Whomever suggested that you move them even further back is essentially clueless about lighting.
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3. OP:
"...but it looks too overexposed on the side, so I guess I should turn my shutter down then..."
In general, one NEVER adjusts the shutter speed to change the exposure due to the flash units. This is because the duration of the flash (usually, around 1/500th of a second) is always much shorter than the maximum permitted shutter speed, so the length of time your shutter is open
generally has no effect on the exposure of your images.
However, there are two exceptions to this:
The first exception is that you have to be operating the camera within its rated limits. For your Sony Alpha (ie, SLT-A55V), the max sync speed is either 1/160 or 1/200 depending on which website you read. If you increase your shutter speed, from the current value of 1/200th to, say, 1/500th, most likely you will wind up with an ugly dark band down part of your images. Read the manual for your camera and don't go any faster than what it says.
The second exception, ie, ways that changing the shutter speed could influence the brightness of a flash exposure, is if there is a substantial amount of ambient light (say from the windows or conventional room lights) floating around the room. If you are attempting to shoot studio quality portraits, you don't want this. You want to be in full control of the lighting. Just like spill light hitting the ceiling and reducing the contrast ratio, the only thing ambient room light will do is also make it harder to reach your desired contrast ratio and let YOU be in full control of the lighting.
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4. Thanks for providing the photo of your setup taken on your iPod Touch. It was useful, but it still leaves me with some questions:
a) What
exactly is the modifier I see on the left in this photo? Is it a shoot-through umbrella, an octobox, or something else? Please provide a URL link to a description of it.
b) Why don't I see any light coming from the softbox on the right, but a huge amount of light coming from the source on the left? If the two are in sync, I would expect to see light from both, or from neither depending on exactly when you too the iPod photo, but not one on and one off.
c) If you are only shooting with two flash sources, what is/are causing the two bright blobs of light on or near the ceiling (circled below in red)? If they are conventional room lights, are they on when you took the photos you posted at the start of this thread?
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5. For the time being, PLEASE lets only discuss lighting, and not confuse the issue with an almost entirely irrelevant discussion of RAW vs JPG files, post processing, color balance, or anything else. Everything we are discussing here could have been discussed in 1965 with black and white film shot on a view camera, LOL. You need to get the basics of lighting down first before you move on to topics further along in your workflow.
Cheers,
Tom
PS - So that we are efficient about discussing your lighting problem, when you respond to me, please (a) respond to each of my points in turn - don't miss any; and (b) don't mix responses to other folks in a post for me - put responses to others in separate posts and indicate who each one is for.
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