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.
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by David, at 10:04 PM.
12 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.
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