Formal Lighting

Techniques
Single and Multiple lighting in the studio
PHOTO 101
 Itinery
• Basic principles of lighting

• Why and how to use one light

• Formal portrait lighting

• Why and how to use more than one light

• Light modi ers/accessories

• Inverse square Law

• Lighting ratios, why use them?

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 Basic
Principles
We are lit by one light everyday,
and that is the sun. In lighting
our main aim is to imitate the
sun to get the most natural
light. So quite often using one
light can be most effective. You
don’t need an expensive set up
to get great photo’s. However
having options is always useful.
 Lighting Basics:
• Firstly, as we are imitating the
sun, the light must be higher
than the subject because the
sun is always above us.

• Secondly, accessories always

get re ected into the eye. This
means that when we do close
ups of the face, beauty,
headshots or portraits, the
accessory should be circular.
So the re ection in the eye is
circular. We call this a
catchlight. Avoid square soft
boxes.
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 Lighting Basics:
• Wherever you put a light, shadow will be
created on the other side. To eliminate
shadow you need either another light
source or a re ector on the shadow side.

• The sun is considered a hard lighting

source because it is so far away. Hard
lighting is characterised by it’s hard
shadows. The further the light source is,
the narrower the angle it hits the subject.

• Soft lighting gives soft shadows because

it is closer. The closer the lighting source
the softer the shadows. This is because
it hits the subject at a wider angle. The
wider the area, the softer the shadow.
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 • So if you want to imitate direct sunlight, you need to
set up a hard lighting accessory with your lights.
However hard shadows are considered
un attering. So if you want to set up attering
lighting consider soft lighting accessories which
are designed to increase the surface area of the
light, and therefore increase the angle at which it is
hitting the subject.
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 • The Key light is the main light source

• The ll light is the light the lls in the shadow.

• Ratios: The key light should always be at least one

stop brighter than the ll.

• If the ll is the same power as the key light then this

becomes even lighting 1:1. This is OK, for example
in beauty lighting when you want to eliminate all
shadow. But remember a bit of shadow is natural.
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• Light is measured in Kelvin’s.

• Daylight travels at 5500 K

• Tungsten/arti cal light travels at 3200 K

• Flash is daylight balanced to travel at the same

temperature

• We use white balance to set the temperature of the

light we are using, not the light that we want.
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• When light is photographed the temperature can
create a colour cast on our images.

• The problem is it is cast across the entire image

including the whites/highlights. So we need to
correct this.

•
• Daylight under tungsten temp casts blue

• Tungsten under day light casts orange

• Fluorescent casts green

“Single point lighting.”
 “Butter y lighting.”
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“Beauty lighting.”
“Loop lighting.”
 Loop Lighting
Used a lot in fashion
portraits. It’s one of my
favourite to use. The light
basically loops round to the
chin. Wider than Rembrandt.
Gives good de nition to
bone structure and
highlights cheek bones.
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“Split lighting.”
“Edge Lighting.”
“Back lighting.”
• These all individually can be effective individually.
But can also be used together as a multiple lighting
set-up. So edge light becomes a hair light, which
can be used with loop for example.

• It can all depend on the colour of your background,

because generally we don’t light black paper.
Multiple Lighting in a
photographic studio:
 Roles of Lights:

• Background light/s
• Key light - Main
• Fill light - ll shadow

• Hair light- highlighter/

separator from bkg
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• Using more than one light

• To light the subject separately

from the background

• Taking into account it’s a 3d

object

• Purpose to eliminate shadow

here we have a 3 point
lighting set-up
 Soft Light:
• Bringing light closer

• More even

• Easier to expose

• Can be at

• Flattering

• Mid day is the worst time of day

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Soft accessories: Anything that
increases the surface area
Soft accessories for studio:

• Soft box

• Beauty dish

• Umbrella

• Octobox
 Hard light:
• Move light further away

• Contrast

• Depth

• 3-dimension

• Brutal un attering

• Harder to expose for

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 Hard light:
Anything that
narrows the
surface area
 Hard light accessories:

• Snoot

• Spill kill

• Honeycomb

• Barndoors
Re ectors
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Lighting ratio’s
We will also look at ratio’s of
lighting on the face.

A ratio is a comparison of
one thing to another. In
lighting it is a comparison of
light to shadow on both
sides of the face.
 Lighting ratio’s:
• Remember Aperture is a
factor of 2. So 2:1 is 1 stop
difference F11:F8

• 4:1 is a 2 stop difference

F16:F8

• 8:1 is a 3 stop difference so

F16: F5.6

• 16:1 is a 4 stop difference so

F16:F4. This is rare though
because that contrast is
un attering.
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Inverse square law: useful in
analogue photography

In technical terms, an inverse square law is de ned as ‘any physical law stating that some
physical quantity or strength is inversely proportional to the square distance from the source of
that physical quantity.’
The law itself in photography applies to lighting. Its most relevant application is with off camera
lighting- in the studio for example. According to the law, the power of light will be inversely
proportional to the square of the distance. So if the distance of the light from subject is 2 meters,
when squared we get 4, so the inverse of which, would be 1⁄4 or rather a quarter of the original
power-not half. Moving the subject 3 meters from the light becomes 1/9 because the square of 3
is 9. And so on.
If we measure F16 on the subject and then move the light 2 meters away the formula for
calculation becomes:
F= Intensity/Distance (squared) F16 = 16/4 = F4

In simple terms if you move the light further away from the subject the light falls off and
becomes weaker. So you need to open up the aperture to get the same intensity/exposure
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It can be used for moving the
model or the light…

So if the subject is very close to the light we would need to set our
aperture to around F16, to block out all the excess light. If on the other
hand the subject or model is moved further away from the light we
would need to set our aperture to around F4 in order to let more light in.
Both photographs should look identical because we’ve adjusted our
camera to let in the same amount of light for each.