What's the best method to achieve to get a good high key picture?
How far should the subject be from the background?
How many lights is required? 2 lights to burn the background?
How to prevent spilling of light on to the subject?
How many stops difference should the subject be to the background?

EG,

Producing high key doesn't only mean dealing with light setups. You can also add a third to half stop of exposure to heighten the high key effect. Usually, high key effect is applied better on scenes dominated by light tones, lighter than middle gray such as a bride in a pale lemon yellow room that's bathed in bright morning light, the objects not necessarily have to be 'white'.

The number of lights have a bearing on the high key effect but note that high key lighting is characterized by low contrast ratio among the light units - primary and fill in particular; and preferably soft in nature, thou, hard lighting is permissible at times as long as you maintain the low contrast aspect of your setup. So that means, light difference is placed between a third to half to at most full stop among relevant light sources.

If you are in a studio setting, and the background is light grey!
and you want to make it all completely white in the picture, how should you start metering? DO you meter with the subjects there or without?

When you mentioned low contrast aspect?
I guess this can not be done using a reflector? (which is what i did and end up with too dramatic of an effect.)

Best if you use a white background...but light grey is still okay but not middle or dark grey anymore-as far as subject/scene tone is concerned. You measure the background independently and set the BG lights at the desired power, etc. in relation to the other light sources.

You can still attain a low contrast ratio in highlights and shadows with a relfector, depending on the physical aspects of the reflector and its proximity to the subject.

If you are in a studio setting, and the background is light grey!
and you want to make it all completely white in the picture, how should you start metering? DO you meter with the subjects there or without?

When you mentioned low contrast aspect?
I guess this can not be done using a reflector? (which is what i did and end up with too dramatic of an effect.)

background strobes should pop 2 stops over exposure settings in the camera right?

Yes you may set it that high, but too powerful illumination coming from the background and light may bleed at the sides of the outline of your subject. If you want to avoid this, just set your background light to one stop more...illuminating the backround evenly is more important to maintain that uniform white backround.

sir jay, if i set it to 1 stop higher would it still be white with no details? kasi i thought for white with no details dapat 2 stops over....

Yes Christian, one stop should be enough.

christopher po sir heheheh :D

thanks for answering the question....i just cant get the reasoning why it would be 1 stop over lang. would it be possible to explain why?

Christopher,

Too much light being reflected by the background back to your lens could create flare especially if you're using a lens that can't handle one, and the reflected light could bleed at the edges of the subject thereby obscuring the clear outline of your subject; add to that the tendency of the digital sensor to introduce 'bloom' in the image; and its narrow exposure latitude. With negative film, it's possible to use 2 stops over with a lower probability of background light bleeding the edges of the subject. Transparencies are best set to not go over than one stop usually. We only want to achieve a pure white background, a luminous one possibly, without obscuring details especially caused by high contrast lighting levels.

christopher po sir heheheh :D

thanks for answering the question....i just cant get the reasoning why it would be 1 stop over lang. would it be possible to explain why?

thanks po :D