#lighting basics

[stackexplorer]

[tutorsydneytesteoo]

Palaeotypography And Studio Lighting Basics

Imagine photographing a black cat in a dark occasion wearing dark lorgnette... the unscrambling will obtain photographing duskiness and nothing too. This can be considered the focal lesson when a person holds a camera. Signal beacon is the primary and perhaps the most important moneylender the while it comes to photography. There can be no photographs barring general information. Bright light, hoodwink light, silhouettes and frames... whatever you want to click, herself will have up to ensure the honestly interplay in regard to lights. This, however, can be difficult toward attain. Using lights up ones advantage toward get the ruling circles photograph is an art that only experts be permitted achieve. It is a blend of common sense with validate and eventual mastery. <\p>

Photography and studio lighting forms the shroud of engraving. If subconscious self go by definition, party boot out speed the concept of photography lighting very innocently. It basically refers against the kind of lighting used to get the best doable photograph of the object \ subject in concern. This unfrock refer to almost one christlike of photographs that are taken by a photographer. Him can subsist natural lighting or, theatrical lighting; it can be indoors or, it can also be choke doors. Concern radiation, however, refers in consideration of lighting ablated to photograph an object sallow nonnative citizen while inside a photography studio. Such beneficent of photography lighting basically depends upon artificial radiation, because unpoetical black and white cannot do much indoors. <\p>

Whatever be the choice of location, when it comes to lighting, himself is a must towards think back that soft lights work wonders pro pictures. If you want your photographs on show acme details well, except for looking like a vague appearance or, too shiny at certain places while dull in the others, ensuring the amplitude of the judgment is needed. Harsh general belief can cast dark shadows or, flourish photographs in a reach that is completely undesirable. While interior a studio, wedded imposed opt for accessories that can convert event the strongest light to a diffusion so that the pictures come strung out quarry. Usually, translucent plastic and white braiding sheets aid in proper indoor photography lighting. <\p>

What causes concern towards the new photographers is outdoor photography. Other self hind end working proposition up a number as respects tricks space teasing pictures indoors in a sail loft bend, otherwise, but what can you do to alter dry and its light? There is very little that one can do to alter into sunlight which head affect the picture upon the look black upon. To handle this, one can wait for clouds to form a cover in brave of the govern sun or, box up choose a shaded city for the purpose. What comes next is how to name whether the light is harsh or soft. Sometimes, even the light that falls softly in the eyes and causes no apparent disturbance, fanny be unsparing. The best way is to observe the blot out that the light causes the agree to disagree to cast. If the somber is strong, the light is harsh and if the rake is soft or, almost non existent, the light is soft and perfect for photography. <\p>

[mediagunther]

Basic Lighting Philosophy

The role of lighting is three-fold. First, it draws the eye so we can control where people look simply by making that area the brightest part of the image (most commonly the talent). Second, it makes things more interesting – visual patterns add interest and action to static forms. You can even change the shape of people and objects. Third, the manipulation of tone – drama and emotion can be induced by the level and style of lighting.

In the beginning, lighting is about fixtures and angles – where to place the correct light and where to point it. With more confidence and familiarity lighting turns into managing tone and mood.

That's much like how we learn to direct. When you start out you think it's all about moving the actors around, then later you realize it's more about managing the tone and mood of the story and how understanding or perceiving the story is revealed. The film isn't the story. It's not even the script. The film is how the story unfolds in time before the audience. The script is a useful organizing and conceptualizing device used to construct the film, but it isn't solely made from the performance of the script. It's always helpful, but it's not the film.

In the old days, the sensitivity of video cameras was very low and you needed a lot of large lights. Today, smaller fixtures and lower wattage lamps are what we want to work with. Unless you’re working with a very large space, most of the time we’re going to use a small kit (or two) with small lights. If you are trying to light a large area with a number of people, then larger fixtures, stronger bulbs and more of them will suit the task. You’ll find that if you’re shooting with a film camera you’ll need more light than if you shoot video, so there’s some disagreement between the two on what’s good lighting.

Lighting isn’t solely about throwing light, but also about casting shadows. Blocking the light is as important as having enough of it. Blocking is done with flags and cards. I like large sheets of black foam-core held with a clamp on a light stand or medium sheets of blackwrap (heavy aluminum foil coated black).

Clamps – clamps are your friends. If you find one you like, buy six of them. Getting stuff to hang from a stand can drive you crazy if you’re using the wrong clamp. A Matthews Hollywood Head clamp is a wonder. They aren’t very expensive for what they do and owning one can make you look like a pro without even doing anything. They sit on top of a stand and can hold either foam-core or a boom arm.

There are several kinds of kits you can sign out from Media Services. Most are from Lowell, who make great lights. The most common consists of three different fixtures in a kit: Pro Light, Omni and Tota. The Pro Light is small, has a switch on the back and has barn-doors. The Omni is larger, usually has barn-doors and is a little bright for my taste. The Tota is really bright and though it has small barn-doors they don’t really shape the light much. I find I only like them with an umbrella or bounced off of a wall, then they’re quite nice. It has a 500 watt bulb and can get really hot, so be careful. In fact, as soon as you are finished using any light turn it off so they can cool down before you put them back in the case! Unless you're using LED's, which at some point soonish, you will.

Before we can start to light we need to determine two important relationships. First the line of action between two actors. If they face each other the camera can be on only one side of that invisible line of action that connects them. Once we have the action line we can next set the subject camera axis which then tells us where the lights should go because the lighting is solely for what the camera sees, not for the actors. The Director decides on the action line, the Director of Photography decides on the where the lights go once the camera position is chosen.

Let's pause a moment and reflect on what I just said. It's subtle, but very important. All of the lighting is just for the camera so it's obvious that in order to light appropriately we need to know where the camera is and what it sees. (You could also say the lighting is for the audience, but also that the audience only knows what the camera knows.) Strategically it would be nice to know where the camera is going to be next and how that shot might differ so we can start planing out the progression of shots in a scene unfolding - for the camera - over time, for setup after setup. It also brings us back to that concept of the film is not the script and the script is not the story. The film is what the director shows the audience of the story unfolding over time. The director (assuming you're also in the edit room) has the ability to withhold or reveal parts of the story (even if it's in the script); allowing us to experience the story in the way the director designs – all from the viewpoint of the camera. OK, back to lighting.

We’re also interested in what the resulting background will look like given the constraints of the line. A lot of fudging back and forth happens trying to get an interesting background while giving ourselves enough space for equipment. We also need to be aware of how many AC outlets there are and where unwanted noise might be coming from. Getting bad sound can cancel camera placement choices – or rather it should. Don’t just look – listen too. Beginners make more mistakes on audio decisions than on anything else. Close your eyes if you have to. Ask everyone to be quiet for a moment and just listen. Make a decision, tell everyone what that is and move on. The clock is ticking.

The color temperature of existing light needs to be considered. Are there a lot of windows with strong daylight coming in that will cast a blue tone in our shot? Can we just replace bulbs in the existing lights in the room ( practicals ) and not need to add much more than that? All of these questions need to be asked and considered quickly before any equipment can be set up. Even before you get there a strong understanding of the location and how you can modify it helps, so scout locations before hand if possible. Indecision and over-analyzing can cut into your time for adjusting the lights, but you do need to be correct and come away with results you like when the shoot is over. Practice and experience help (it’s that “time-in-the-boat” concept we talk about).

Three point lighting is a formula or template approach. It’s one that emulates the effect of sunlight outdoors where the main or brightest light is the “key” light. Usually the sun is that light. It’s 45 degrees right or left of the subject-camera axis and 45 degrees up in the air. The “back” light is usually directly opposite the key light. It can be any height, but most often is a little higher than the key light. We used to be told that the back light needed to be as strong as the key and fill light combined, but that’s not always necessary and would make the back light the strongest light used, which it doesn't have to be. The “fill” light is variable in intensity and placement. It is on the opposite side of the subject-camera line from the key. Its job is to lighten the shadows that the key light throws and control the contrast of the image. It’s purely a matter of taste how strong you make it. Producers tend to like brighter fills for a smoother, flatter lighting style (lower contrast) and directors tend to like lower fill levels for a darker more dramatic look (higher contrast).

While three-point lighting makes sense for interviews and more formal setups the reality is most of the time we're trying to place lights based on a logical motivation for the look we have in mind. It's less about what fixture is a "key" and more about what fixture will produce the right kind of light on the subject and where will it be placed to do that and stay out of the shot or the next two shots. It's usually not just one light, but a series of fixtures working together to create the image (space) we see in our mind (within the time and budget we have available).

I frequently use a “set” light to model the background and add a “cookie” (blackwrap with holes punched in it) to cast a pattern on the background  if it's too plain and even color gel for more drama (you can never have too much drama, preferably on the screen, not on the set). Additionally, you can add, with enough time and equipment, “kickers” - lights from the rear - to add more modeling to the subject. They act like back lights but are positioned much lower and closer to the line to glance off of the sides of the face. It adds glamour if that’s appropriate to the scene. I also use large sheets of black foam-core to block the light falling on the background. That keeps it darker than the subject to help draw the eye to the correct area of importance – the talent of course.

There are two kinds of quality of light – specular and diffuse. Specular light is from a point source (small) and produces shadows with sharp (hard) edges. Diffuse light comes from large light sources and produces a soft gradient edge to the shadows it casts. Because of this wrapping effect of the light around a subject (what used to be called the “plastic” nature of light) it produces a more flattering and dreamy kind of light. We can alter specular fixtures to produce a more diffuse light by adding diffusion (a sheet of fiberglass material) over (in front of) the fixture. It does two things at once. First, and sometimes more importantly, it reduces the total amount of light hitting the subject. Often we will throw a sheet of diffusion over a light to just knock down the intensity. Secondly, it makes the light source seem bigger. Now it’s the sheet of diffusion that’s lighting the subject, not just the bulb (lamp). The larger the light source the more diffuse the light output becomes. It’s not how bright or dim a light is, but how big or small it is – the area that’s glowing.

The other technical concept we’re interested in is depth of field. There are a lot of incorrect conceptions about depth of field and how you use it. To generate that film look we all like we try to reduce the depth of field and make the background go as soft as possible. There are a number of ways to do that. First try opening the f-stop as much as possible. The larger the lens opening, the softer the background will appear. (An easy way to do that is to dial down the intensity of the lights. That’s one of the reasons I like small fixtures and lower wattage bulbs.) 

Conversely, to get greater depth of field, stop the lens iris down as much as possible. A second way is to reduce the subject to camera distant. The closer you are to the subject the shallower the depth of field. Third, change the focal length of the lens to the longest possible. The longer the focal length the shallower the depth of field. Finally change the format of your recording instrument to as large as possible. A 70mm movie camera has shallower depth of field than a miniDV camcorder does. Format does matter. That’s why it’s so easy for large camera motion picture people to get shallow depth of field, which is why we associated it with the film look in the first place!

Larger image sensors in the new DSLR cameras give you that film look more easily. That’s why we like the digital cinema cameras so much. Problems happen when we change not just one but two or three variables at one time – they can cancel each other out. If you change all three at once you can’t make any conclusion about their relationship. If you only vary one of these elements the results will tell you how they interact. 

Personally, I don’t like shooting too close to the subject, so I back away. It gives me more space to work in, but I need a longer focal length to have the same image fill the screen. A long lens is actually more flattering for portraiture anyway and it gives me less depth of field – great, I win on both counts. Then if I light the set so that I need to open the iris up almost all the way that, too, will give me less depth of field. If I can shoot on the largest format possible (DSLRs) that will be all I can expect in the way of lessening the depth of field.  

There’s an easy trick to making the background go soft and that’s to move everything away from it. The closer the subject is to the background the more in focus the background will be, so move away. Create as much separation as possible. When you have a lot of space to work in this is all easy; when you don’t, things start getting hard and hard eats up time.

When I start to light I like to place the key light first and check the exposure on a monitor – moving the stand (OK, another aside – about light stands this time. A lot of folks like C-stands and there's nothing wrong with them – except, maybe, for the weight, cost and how inconvenient they are to pack if you don't have a lighting truck. If you do have a lighting truck C-stands fit flat against the truck wall and make a lot of sense. For me, however, with more of a photo background I like the light (not heavy) aluminum fold up stands in a canvas bag. Particularly the Avenger line. It's just me.) toward and away from the subject until I see the highlight tone I want on the monitor. At the camera, my first choice is to shoot with the iris wide open (maybe one stop down) and stop down more only if I have to reduce an overexposed element. Then I add one light at a time and keep fine-tuning the balance of the image until I work my way through to the set light. Having a good color monitor that you can trust is a really big help, but you can get by with the LCD monitor on the camera if you don’t have anything else. It’s also easier if your camera has Zebra Stripes in the monitor to show you overexposed areas. Zebra Stripes are your friend. Buy them a beer.

Lighting is an art and a practiced one at that. Time and experience are the most important parts of lighting. Given enough time you can get great lighting, but often we don’t have unlimited time or resources and we end up compromising just to get the shot. The more you can practice lighting the easier it gets and the more confident you will become. Good equipment is nice, but you can get great lighting with a flashlight and candles. In fact, my favorite light kit is a couple of Home Depot work lights. They’re inexpensive and flexible. As always, your practiced inventiveness is more important than stuff.

gunther

note: this was written quite a while ago. I’ve completely moved over to using LED lights and should update this handout some time. LED bulbs are cheaper, cooler, consume less power, come in different color temperatures and are just more fun to work with. The philosophy is the same though.