An Evening in Frodsham
A "two light" three light set up
We started by looking at the quality of light, I explained that my torch was a small light compared to the size of me. And yes shining the torch on my hand lit up my hand. However looking beyond my hand we could see that the torch was also lighting the wall behind my hand, and where my hand interrupted the light I was creating a shadow on the wall. When I put my hand between the larger softbox & the wall there was significantly less shadow.
The fact that the light was small created the shadow, it was very dark, prominent & hard ! And this is where we get the term hard light ! As we can see in the shot below.
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My camera settings for the evening were :-
ISO - 100 "ISO always low, as low as it'll go"
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Aperture - F8 For no other reason than "F8 is great"... F8 is where most lenses are designed and built around, this will give you the sharpest image, and also gives a good depth of field. This was after all a basic shot wanting everything in focus, no shallow depth of field for arty purposes tonight.
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My shutter speed came in at 1/160th sec. You need to google or read your cameras manual to figure out the cameras flash sync speed, and never go over this amount or you will get a black line down one side of your picture. The flash sync speed on my camera is 1/200, I like to err to caution and so I drop 1/3 of a stop giving my 1/160. This will render the majority of the ambient light unseen by the sensor, so all I have to worry about is the power of my strobes.
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Strobe power - Easiest way to work this out is with a light meter, however these are dear and if you are not going to be using studio strobes regularly, then a waste of money ! So the rule of thumb here is to take a picture with just the main light on, if it is too bright, turn it down, or if it is too dark turn it up... We also saw that the shutter speed has no affect on the strobes, if I slowed the shutter speed down the image would not alter in brightness, this is because the lights typically flash far faster than the shutter speed anyway. APERTURE CONTROLS FLASH, remember that and you can't go far wrong !
The light that I am using here is slightly larger than my torch, it is a studio strobe with a snoot on it. A snoot is merely a cone shape, the wide end is designed to fit over the strobe & it tapers down to a small hole at the other end, giving me a small focused beam of light. Giving me really Hard shadows, even on my models face.
There is a picture of a snoot way down at the bottom of this
Below is a birds eye view of my set up
OK lets get rid of the snoot and replace it with a reasonably large softbox. This is to be my main light. Now we have a shadow on the wall but it is very feint, see through, Soft. And for this reason we call it soft light. Oh but look how dark her face is to camera left !​​​​​​​
So what we have to do is to introduce light into the right hand side of the models face ( to camera left ). Yes we could use another strobe, but what if you only have one strobe ?
Let's bring in a reflector on the opposite side to the strobe.
I have now angled the softbox to camera left so it is hitting the reflector, which is angled to bounce light back into the models right side.
And below is a birds eye view with the reflector. Normally the reflector, and probably the strobe would be much closer too the model and the camera would be in portrait orientation.
We can see that the main light is approx 45 degrees from the model, a good starting point, but hey, take the picture, move the light take another picture, which do you prefer, like them both, Then they are both right
Is there a right or wrong ? NO ! It is down to personal interpretation, if you like it where it is, then it is right
Now for the third light in our two light set up...
Let's look at the set up first. I have placed another strobe (my second light) on the opposite side from the main light, and behind my model, shining light back onto her right arm and the back of her head. This is a strobe the same as the main light, but instead of a softbox throwing light everywhere, this has a standard reflector dish on it, which spreads the light outwards, but nowhere near as much as the softbox, & because it is relatively small it is hard light, but because it is behind the model and the light is just skimming her arm it doesn't get the chance to create any shadows. Also this has been fitted with a grid which helps to focus the light into a tighter beam, so there is no stray light coming back into camera, and thus much easier to shine it only where we want.
I am going to set this light to 1 to 1.5 stops less than the main light, let's say the main light is on power level 4, the rim light will be on power level 2.5 to 3, or if I was using my light meter, Main light is set to F8, this is what my camera is set to, so my rim light will be set to either F4.5, F5.0 or F5.6
Below are pictures of a snoot and a standard reflector with a removable grid
This has all been done with a program called "set a light 3d" It is quite expensive for the full program, but you can download a 15 day trial, so you can have a play and see if you like it... It is OK I suppose, but there is no substitute for the real thing. Cannot see me paying for it when the trial runs out.
The rim light hasn't shown up very well on here, so for all the money it isn't that good a tool
The rim light around the model helps to seperate her from the background giving a sens of depthe and dimension
I hope anyone who reads this finds it helpful or maybe even interesting. Not really giving away state secrets, just general information that I hope will explain the why's and wherefores of lighting for a basic modelling set up.
If you have any thoughts or comments please hit the contact button on the home page and drop me an email, I will help any way I can !
Thnx, Norman & Claire