Reverse Engineering Other Shooters' Light
Alright, if you have been paying attention so far (and you are not a potted plant) you should have some idea of what kind of light produces what kind of effect. So let's run with that a little.You cannot hide how you lit something. Everything about the light - style, color, direction, size, beam spread, etc., - is on display for any shooter with something between his or her ears to figure out.
You should be able to deconstruct the light used by others.
Here are some starters.
Q: Where did the light come from?
A: The shadows will tell you.
Q: Were there multiple sources?
A: If the light appears to be coming from multiple directions (assuming no mirrors) probably. Also check for inconsistent shadows.
Q: Was the strobe light balanced?
A: Well, do the florescents look, say, white? There you go. Ditto tungsten, etc.
Q: Is the light falling over a small, restricted area?
A: Snoot or grid.
Q: What is the easiest way to check the style of the front light in a portrait?
A: Eyes make good mirrors to see the light sources. If they are wearing sunglasses, you are golden. Unless they Photoshopped it. And no, you cannot do that if you are a journalist. And if you are a Strobist, you shouldn't have to.
Q: Was the light nearby?
A: Check how fast it falls off as it travels across the subject. Fast? Yes. Slow or none? No.
Q: Was the light source large?
A: Depends on how close it is. A small, shoe-mount flash head looks like a softbox from 2" away on a macro shot. The sun, which is the largest light source you'll likely be using, is pretty hard because of the 93,000,000 mile thing. It is all about how big the light appears to the subject.
Q: Is that light strobe or continuous?
A: That can be a toughie. You can use available light effectively enough to fool people.
Q: How did they get that overcast sky so neon blue?
A: Set the camera balance to tungsten, which renders the formerly neutral clouds blue. Underexpose the sky (to, say, a stop below medium grey) for more of an effect. Then, CTO-gel the flash lighting your subject to render the light hitting it as white and you have the effect.
Q: This is starting to sound random and incoherent. Are you OK?
A: Yes, it is. And no, I am not. I am home sick from work today, feeling like I got runover by a train. I will add more to it later when I am more lucid.
But I hope you are starting to get the idea that there are no secrets when it comes to light.
Only physics.
Next: Know Your Flash
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Posted at 10:04 PM.
18 Comments:
I'd like to read the more-coherent version of the blue-sky Q&A thing when you've recovered from that train-incident.
(?)
I have an "On Assignment" on that technique ready to go, but I have to wait until the photo runs in the paper first.
(It is scheduled to run in about a week.)
Enjoy your pages! Just add one point. We can guess the type of light modifiers by looking at the specularity of the highlight, shadow definition, shadow contrast and edge transfer. Sometimes we can work out whether the modifier is a Fresnel, grid reflector, softbox or beauty dish..etc by observing above features.
Singlo-
Do I sense another Dean Collins Finelight Video fan in the house?
Hmmm... pretty cool photo of the light bulb! That'd be "110v AC" right? And although it looks like it's switched on there's no obvious connection to it. Kind of "floating" one might say. One might also say that it looks like it's lit by a couple of, hmmm, long soft-ish lights; one either side?
Almost looks like a good use for a couple of those DIY macro strip lights... ;)
Unless of course I'm totally way off the mark and its not switched on at all... just lit by a heavily snooted low-power CTO'd flash. :P
BAH! NOW I get to the article where you actually tell us about that lightbulb. And here I was thinking I was being clever! :P
David- just wanted to say a massive thankyou for this. I've been reading your strobist articles for about two months now and was starting to think It'd never sink in but today I had an epiphany moment when I was brousing some galleries on another site and it all clicked!
I realised that i'd looked at a photo and found myself thinking. "I like that he's obviously used a snoot to backlight etc" didn't know I'd learnt so much I had no idea about before stumbling across this site.
Cheers,
Tim
David-
Any chance on seeing some neon-blue sky examples? Thanks!
Could someone please explain "a stop below medium grey." I have been shooting for a while now and I have not heard the term in the context of exposure.
Thanks,
Jeff
Could someone please explain "a stop below medium grey." I have been shooting for a while now and I have not heard the term in the context of exposure.
Thanks,
Jeff
Medium grey is the exposure your camera's light meter will consider to render a scene as 'correct exposure'. The exposure meter will measure the whole scene and based on the average reading it reads (considering highlights and shadows) it will suggest an exposure that would be equivalent to what is known as the mid-grey / medium grey / 18% grey exposure.
To explain that differently, if you had a scene with lots of dark shadow areas, the camera would guess at an exposure which would effectively raise these to mid-grey and can make the shadows look washed out (in this case you may compensate by reducing the exposure to render dark areas as darker).
I think what David is referring to in this example, is you would measure a correct exposure for the overcast sky (which would generally be bright) and then further reduce it by one stop to darken and emphasise the effect we are going for. When you take the image with strobe you would have a dark sky rendered blue by the white balance setting whilst the subject would be exposed correctly and at the right colour.
I think I've got the right end of this one and hope that explained it properly!
I was thinking maybe `David lit the bulb with another snooted flash on top directly, to make it seemed like it's on, but I don't think it would be so well lightened. It's more likely to be connected to an AC, and cables were hidden from the back. That seems more likely to me.
This is a beautiful shot of a rather mundane object. First the easiest light to decipher is the white light coming from below on either side of the bulb. Judging from the shape of the specular highlights, I'd say the source is simply two naked strobes at low power placed on 45 degrees to either side. about 4 feet away from the bulb.
The most puzzling to me is the light of the bulb itself. First, the warm, buttery glow is unmistakenly incandescent, as opposed to the sickly blue/green of flourescents. What is really confusing is the modelling and shadow on the bulb itself, which couldn't happen if the bulb were actually turned on and producing light. My best guess is the bulb is "painted" with a smaller light in a long exposure. The light seems to be coming from within the spiral of the bulb, so it might have been something as small as a white christmas light dropped into the middle of the spiral, or just a flashlight coming through from the back.
This leaves two main questions. First, how is the bulb supported? Either it's mounted on a stick coming through the background, or the stand was wiped out in post. Second, how did you get the backlight to be the same shape as the bulb instead of just going oval? I would guess a snoot with a bulb-shaped gobo, but this would be much easier to fix in post production photoshop.
Is this close at all?
I'm looking at the same type of bulb and the bottom looks different. I'm wondering if the white area at the very bottom of the bulb is the mount and possibly the fixture that it is screwed into. Could it be a sconce coming out from the wall? Which means the bulb is on.
Lights are almost directly to the sides (not from below, as one person guessed.) This is shown by the two bright spots (one right below the "FC" on the label.) Reflection off the back sides of the base and bulb would cause the backdrop to also be lit in the same "bulb" pattern and gobo's on the lights would prevent direct light from hitting the backdrop. The lighting on the glass tube itself does have me puzzled a bit.
I think this was done with two naked flashes on their sides placed in a cross lighting setup. Both flashes very close, just out of frame but on very low power, the left a half a stop lower than the right.
The bulb is lit from above with a snooted, heavily CTO'd strobe directed into the core of the spiral and the background is lit with another short-snooted or fully-'zoomed' strobe from beneath directed up at about a 30 degree angle at the backdrop.
I doubt it's your style to Photoshop out a stand so I am guessing the bulb is suspended somehow using a fine chord, fishing wire or the like?
Tell us Mr Strobeman! :)
For those unsure about how this was done have a look in the On Assignment area: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/06/developing-idea-part-2-compact.html
For those who want to know how this was done, see the On Assignment area: http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/06/developing-idea-part-2-compact.html
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