Introduction to studio lighting

From Nikonians Wiki

Studio lighting tends to use one, two, three or four lights, with reflectors and other light modifiers, and is generally done with studio strobes rather than continuous lighting. For a studio lighting setup, you need the lights, the relevant stands and light modifiers, something to trigger them, reflectors, and a backdrop of some kind. You will also need a meter. For film this must be a separate flash meter, but on digital cameras you can use the camera's histogram to enable you to set the light exactly. Unless you are using Nikon CLS Speedlights, you will need to set the camera to manual exposure, because all automatic exposure modes will measure the ambient light and not the flash. You should set the shutter speed to your camera's maximum sync speed.

There are four basic reasons for using lights, and, in order of importance, they are:

1. To give enough illumination to the subject that you can capture all the details within the dynamic range of your camera, with the depth of field you need.
2. To give true, high colour rendering
3. To use shadow to bring out the three-dimensionality of the subject
4. To freeze motion, so that you can, for example, capture the movement of hair

Studio lights should preferably be from the same manufacturer and the same range, to ensure consistent colour temperature. Each light is generally on its own stand, with an umbrella, softbox, snoot or other light modifier attached, and any required gels held in the light fitting. Additional reflectors can be specially designed photographic reflectors, such as in a tri-flector, or they can be any white or silvered surface. All such surfaces will act as reflectors, whether you intend them to or not.

It is generally best to start with just one light, using reflectors to fill in, as it is easier to achieve natural results this way and easiest to learn. From there, you can progress to two lights, and so on.

A basic approach to learning to use lights is as follows:

Using one light:

Put some distance between the model and the backdrop, preferably twice as far as the distance between the photographer and the model.

Put the light to the right of the camera and high up. This is the key light. Use the biggest softbox you have, and have it quite close to the subject. Alternatively, use a shoot-through umbrella. Think about using short lighting if you are shooting a portrait where the person is not face on to the camera. Short lighting is when the key light illuminates the side of the face further from the camera, as opposed to broad lighting where the key light illuminates the side of the face closest to the camera.

Get someone to hold a flat reflector so it fills in the light on the left hand side of the face. A reflector can also be mounted on a stand.

Use a flash meter to measure light on the model, and set the camera accordingly. Alternatively, for a digital camera, take a guess at the settings, shoot a test picture, and look at the histogram. Adjust the lights or camera settings to suit, and take a second test shot. With a little practice you should be able to get the light almost right straight away, and it will only take a couple of shots to refine it.

Shoot the image, and examine it carefully. There should be no blown highlights, and there should be no stacked values at the top or bottom of the histogram. Try repositioning the light and the reflector to see what difference this makes in terms of contrast, and the quality of shadows. Keep working on this until you can consistently set the lights so that the whole image is properly illuminated with a pleasing amount of contrast to bring out the three dimensionality of the image.

With one light, you can also try butterfly lighting.

Using two lights:

Put the second light at half height and half power (ie, one stop lower) where you had the reflector the first time. This is now the fill light. The second light can be equipped with a reflecting umbrella, or, alternatively, with a second softbox. Use the reflector to put some light onto the back of the model's hair, unless you have a white background, in which case this will do the job for you. Note that half power means 1 EV less, not half the EV number. Doubling the distance, because of the inverse square law actually means that you reduce the power to 1/4, which is a drop of 2 EV. If you must use lights at the same power, move the fill light back to 1.4x the distance of the key light

With two lights you can also shoot clamshell lighting.

Using three lights:

Same as with two lights, but with the third light low down and behind the model pointed at the backdrop to illuminate it. You can change the tone of the backdrop from dark to blown out white by varying the power of the background light. It is not necessary to put a light modifier on a background light, although, if the background has a texture, a modifier will change how the texture appears.

Using four lights:

Same as three lights, but put a snoot on the fourth light as a hair light, to illuminate the hair of the model. Turn the power on this light _right_ down. You can put the hair light onto the front of the hair for brunette, or to backlight the hair for blonde, or whatever works for you.

• This page was last modified on 24 April 2016, at 07:11.
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