Original subtitles

Welcome to light source, your definitive guide to everything you need

to know about studio lighting for beauty and portrait photography.

In this extensive course, I will be guiding you through the fundamental

knowledge on light itself

to understanding types of studio lighting, flash, duration, power and more.

I will also be looking at the key equipment and accessories that you will

need to create the most impactful images.

Later in the program, you will be guided through over 45 exciting

lighting setups suitable for almost any size studio space.

I cover creative lighting examples with just one light,

right through to a maximum of four lights.

And all of this will be done using only the most standard and affordable

lighting modifiers.

We also look at business portraits, location lighting and mixed lighting scenarios.

And I explain the emotion of light and understanding how to create mood and

feeling through the careful control of light.

So no matter whether you only have one light and a small space, or if you

already have a range of accessories and studio lights, this course will bring

you the knowledge and confidence to excel with your studio lighting.

And remember, you can discuss each section of this course with other

fellow photographers or members of our team in the comments section as you progress.

Plus stick with us for future live shows with further examples related to

this course,

I'm Karl Taylor, and I look forward to being your guide in this, the most

extensive and in depth course ever produced on portrait studio lighting

light source.

So before I can show you a number of amazing lighting setups that you can

use and demonstrating

different lighting modifiers from reflectors,

soft boxes to umbrellas,

we really need to understand the fundamentals

of light, the fundamental principles of light,

and how light works, so that you can benefit from that knowledge when you're applying

these different lighting modifiers and using these different lighting

modifiers later.

Now to get started, we're going to start off with the most

simple fundamental of light.

And that's to do with the size of the light.

Here I have two light sources.

One of them

is a very small point light source,

and the other one is a large, big soft box.

Now both of these light sources give a dramatically

different effect to the lighting or the lighting style.

And it's very important that we understand how and why that happens.

So our basic first rule of thumb is the hardness, or the softness of the light

and the way that dictates the shadows that are cast,

all the lack of shadows that have cast

here.

With a point light source, we will get dramatically strong shadows.

With a large light source, we'll hardly see any shadows at all.

To demonstrate that, I'm going to turn the lights off,

and I'm going to run some tests

on a few different objects so that we can start to learn how we can control

the light.

Ok.

So now that we've turned off our video filming lights,

we're just left with our two photographic lights.

That's our two studio flashlights that we'd use for photography.

Now to demonstrate

the principles of hard light and soft light, and large light sources and

small light sources.

Let's just start with one of the light sources.

So I'm going to turn the large one off.

And that leaves us with this point light source.

Now I'm just going to adjust the position of this light source,

angle it down

at our object.

Let's just get rid of these.

We don't need these at the moment.

And let's just take a look to start with this balloon.

Position it here.

Now,

what do we have?

Well, immediately

you can see with the point light source

that we have the object illuminated.

But we have a very clear, well defined

shadow being cast from the object.

Now, because this object is translucent,

we're also seeing some of that shadow

lightning up on the inside here, because light is actually getting

through the object,

on to the table.

Now, if we compare that to a solid object, an opaque object like this chair,

you can see that the shadows remain solid because the object itself is solid.

The key thing, though, to start off with, the first thing we're looking at,

is the definition of the shadows and the strength of the shadow, the

sharpness of the shadow.

Now let's move on to

the solid object.

Let's look at another factor.

So we have strong shadows.

And we can see where there's breaks in the shadow, where the light is getting

through the object.

But you'll notice, on this particular object,

where the light is striking the white surface, this is clearly illuminated.

But in the shadow sides it's obviously much darker.

And that's whether even being a white object, if this object was gray, or

dark, brown, or black, or something, then these shadows would be even

denser.

So we have what we call high contrast light that's where one side is lit

brightly, the shadow side is very, very dark.

We call those dense shadows.

The shadows are very dense and very dark.

Now on the translucent object, that doesn't apply, because it is obviously transparent.

So there are no shadow sides as such, only the shadow being cast by the

object itself.

Now we're going to come back to the density of shadows and how we control

the density of shadows.

Because this is a very, very important part of good studio photography, and

it's something that in my experience, in training, hundreds and thousands of

professional photographers, many of them don't actually understand.

And when we can control the density, the density of our shadows, independently,

we can learn how to create some amazing lighting setups.

But we'll be coming to that later in this course.

So let's now compare

the shadows that we get with a large light source, instead of the point

light source.

So that I'm going to bring the large light source into position,

and I'm going to position it

in approximately the same position

as the point light source,

and then I'm going to turn

the point like source off, but I'm just going to get this up

and at an angle from above, so the direction

of the light will be the same,

right?

So we're going to turn this light source off and move it out the way,

and we're going to bring our large light source on

and into position.

Now

look at the huge difference.

The object is still illuminated,

but the shadow

has almost disappeared.

There is a very, very soft shadow remaining here,

but it has no defined edge, it has no sharpness, it has no shape.

And the shadows have no density

because

we've changed to a large light source.

Let's, compare it with the little chair,

even with the solid object, the opaque object, like the chair.

Again, our shadows have completely changed.

We can see

that the density of the shadows has dramatically decreased,

but also the definition of the shadow, the shape of the shadow, has

disappeared, and were just left with a general soft shadow.

Now, if you think about this,

try to identify

situations where you may have seen this before, because you see this in the

natural world.

This slighting that you're seeing now simulates what you might see on a

cloudy overcast day, where you've got a large blanket of white cloud,

and the sun is being diffused by that cloud and its casting soft

shadows.

If there was no cloud cloud,

and it was a beautiful clear day with the midday sun, you would have hard,

sharp shadows, very similar to our single point light source, because the

sun in the sky

looks like a single point light source.

Now, going back to our large, soft light here, the other thing that you'll

notice is that the density of the shadows is also reduced, because we

have a lot more light reaching to other areas and bouncing back into the object.

So that's the first

key principle that we need to understand between hard light

and soft light.

We call a pointlight source that casts strong shadows.

We call that a hard

light source.

We call a large light

a soft light source.

And there are, of course, a number of differences

in between.

We can even combine

hard light and soft light to get a mixture of some shadow and softer

shadows as well.

And we'll demonstrate that in one of our next examples.

But first we're going to look at some other principles and fundamentals of light.

Ok?

I've brought a couple of reflector panels, a white reflector to bounce

some light in, and a black reflector, which isn't a reflector at all, it

actually sucks light away.

And we call this a negative film.

And what I want to demonstrate next is the density of shadows and how we can

use reflectors or another light source to actually control the shadows.

Let me pop those down for a moment.

So we're going to use our little white

stool chair to start with.

But I'm going to go back to the point like source for this demonstration,

so that we can clearly see the shadows.

So let's put this one on,

and let's turn this one off

for a moment.

I'll move this one out of the way as well.

Now,

if we have

the object illuminated like, so I'm going to go a little bit higher,

actually, let's point this out as well while we're here.

One of the key things to notice with shadows

is the position of the shadows is obviously dictated by the position of

the light.

So as we move the light source,

you can see, we dramatically change the position of the shape.

Shadows.

Just as the sun moves across the sky, midday sun, the shadows are more

underneath the object when the sun is directly above.

But as we position the light into different positions, the shadows will

go in a different direction.

And this is obviously key to portraiture and the shape of the

shadows on the face, and will be looking at that with some of our

lighting demonstrations

later on in the course.

So we'll just start with the light at this position.

And what I want us to observe at the moment

is how, if this is the correct exposure,

that the shadows will be slightly underexposed.

As a matter of fact, we need to see that with a dark object as well.

Here

with a black object.

If we now look, the dark areas on this object are very dark because it is black

on this side.

So when we get the exposure correct for the light source, with a point light

source on this side,

then the object in the shadows becomes very dark whereas the white object

is lighter.

Soviously, we can still see some detail in there.

But again, this is something to consider depending on the type of

object or subject, or the clothes, or the model, or the person that you're photographing.

For the moment we'll stick with just the white object

to demonstrate

we can control light in the shadows.

So right now we have one light source, just a single, simple point like source.

And if I want to get more light into this area,

then I've got two choices.

I can add

another light source,

or I can introduce a reflector.

And the reflector is the simplest

way to bring light in.

So if we look at the density of the shadows.

As I bring this reflector in, you'll see those shadows

become a great deal lighter.

So I take it away,

I bring it in,

I take it away,

and I bring it in,

and you can see this huge difference that's been made to the shadow side of

that chair.

Now the interesting thing about bringing a reflector in

is that it doesn't destroy

the shadows.

The shadows are still visible.

The definition of the shadows are still visible.

All it does is it adds some light into the shadows.

It reduces the density of the shadows.

And what it's doing is simply bouncing some of our existing point lights, or

some of it, is bouncing off of this reflector panel

into the shadows.

Now the light source is also bouncing off the wall there, back into the

shadows.

But because the wall is much further away, the intensity of light bouncing

back isn't as strong.

So when we bring the wall or a reflector closer, then we can increase

the amount of light going into those shadows.

And that can be controlled simply by the distance of the reflector away from

the subject.

So if we look at my face right now it's quite harshly lit.

I'm lit on this side,

this side will be in fairly strong shadow.

But as I lift up the reflector,

that side of my face starts to become illuminated in the shadows who bring

that up.

And that starts to become illuminated in the shadows

here

and here.

Now the opposite effect

is to take light out of the shadows.

And that's where we'd use a negative filthy.

Now I just explained that at the moment

some of the light is bouncing off the wall

back into the shadows here,

some of the light is bouncing off of the white table surface back into the shadows.

So if we actually want to decrease the amount of light in the shadows, then we

need to cut some of that reflected light out.

So if we have a look at the shadows again, on the side of the chair,

and then I bring the negative fill in,

we can see that those shadows will get darker.

It's only slight on this effect here, because we still have quite a lot of

light bouncing off the table.

But if I actually cover the table, you can see the side of the chair get a lot darker.

There we go, because at the moment a lot of light is bouncing off of the

table back into the shadows.

Because the table is white.

Light is bouncing off the wall.

So if I block the wall and the table, we can see

the density of the shadows

increases.

We get stronger shadows

on the shadow side of our object.

So that's negative film and a positive fill, which we just simply call a reflector

being the white one.

Now we do use different types of reflectors.

Sometimes we use mirrors, or we use silver reflectors or gold reflectors,

which all give a slightly different effect.

Obviously, a gold reflector or, a colored mirrored reflector, would

bounce a little bit of colored light back into those shadows, and we can use

that for creative effect.

Now a reflector is one of the ways that we can control light in our shadows.

The other way is to actually use another light source.

Now by using another light source,

we actually have a lot more control.

Because a reflector

is limited

to the amount of light that it can bounce back.

It's limited by the power of the point light source or the light source that

it's reflecting.

But if we actually introduce another light source instead of the reflector,

then we can control the power of that light up and down on the flash power

output settings.

And we can dictate

how much light we get into these shadows.

So at the moment,

the power of this light is just the modelling lamp we're seeing.

If I just

turn it off, you can see the light disappear.

But I'm just going to adjust the power of that modeling lamp.

Let me just go into the settings

now,

as I change the power

of the modeling lamp, though that's the light that you can see on at the moment.

As I change the power of that light,

you can see the amount of light in the shadows changes.

So I increase

the light and the shadows become brighter.

The shadow is still there,

but I have much more control over the shadows than simply using a reflector,

because I'm able to control the amount of light

from this direction, and therefore the level of brightness in the shadows,

let's take that down again,

and those shadows

will become

darker.

Take it up again,

and those shadows will become lighter.

But notice the definition of the shadows, the shape of the shadows,

everything there remains the same, because this light is still the

dominant light source.

It's the most powerful light source,

based on the settings that I have, the two lights at the moment.

And this is one of the key things to photography is all about the balance of

light.

Sometimes you'll hear the phrase the ratio of light.

I prefer to call it the balance of light.

It's whether this light is more powerful or that light is more

powerful.

At the moment, this light's more powerful, so the shadows are more

dominant from this side.

And being cast this direction,

this light is what we call a fill light.

It is filling in the shadows.

And as you see here,

you can see the density and strength of those shadows

changing

as I change the power of

the fill light.

This is a key fundamental aspect of

studio lighting.

And studio photography

it's even required when we are using a soft source.

So even with a soft light source, where there are virtually no shadows, there

is still a shadow side to the object.

Especially if that object is a dark object, a black or dark gray object,

those shadows will be stronger.

And we will need to use a reflector or a fill light if you want to increase

the shadow detail.

Ok?

Next we're going to look at contrast and texture,

so that we can explore and examine

what type of light you might use.

Four different types of objects or subjects.

For example, we might want to create strong texture and strong shadows by

using a point light source, or we might not want strong shadows.

So we'd need to use a large, soft light source.

We're going to bring in two objects now, one that will benefit from soft

light, and one that will benefit from hard light, and compare the both.

So

to

help us with this demonstration, I have a sponge

and

a violin.

The violin

is glossy and has some large, glossy surfaces.

It does have some texture and small areas of detail as well, but are more

interested in the large, broader, glossy surface in this example.

And then I have a sponge,

which is pitted with lots of small holes.

And we're going to take a look at how those record differently with soft

light and hard light and see which one suits each object.

Ok, so we'll start with these two objects,

and we're going to start with the point light source.

So i'll turn the large light source off.

So we're going to go with hard light from a small light source.

But I'm just going to lower the position of the light a little bit to

create longer,

stronger shadows.

You can see there.

As I lowered the light, the shadows got longer.

Let's just check that again, lights higher, lights lower, and

that will change the texture as we graze our objects with light, then the

texture will increase.

Now

the interesting thing is that each of these items

will look better

with a different light source.

If we start off with the sponge, we can see the small craters or holes in the sponge.

They are what define

that it is actually a sponge.

Without those holes in there, it would be difficult to see the texture or see

the effect of it as a sponge.

So to properly describe this object as a sponge photographically

than lighting it with some form of harder light or point light source,

allows us to reveal that texture

and detail.

Now if we look at the violin, whilst it might look ok, it wouldn't be my first

choice of lighting for this particular object, I probably want a broader soft

light on the violin.

But a broader soft light will not work very well on the sponge.

Let's

demonstrate that

as a comparison side by side.

So we can see, in this

side by side split screen comparison,

the difference

on the sponge

whether we have hard light

or soft light.

So look at the two examples.

You can clearly see how with the hard light source, that's the point light source,

we define the texture

much better.

With the point light source than we do with the soft light.

So for this particular object, the point light source looks more appropriate,

but we can also control the amount of fill light.

Remember, by bringing in a reflector.

So in this example, you can see how the shadow sides become slightly filled in

as we bring that reflector in.

So that shows the differences between a large light source and a point light

source on the very textured object.

Now let's take a look at

a split screen on the violin

soul.

Again, we can see, in this instance,

the violin is better suited to the large light source, to the softer light

source, with the more broad lighting illuminating those glossy, broad surfaces.

And you can see in the side by side comparison, how we have very strong

dark shadows with the point light source,

but we have

much softer shadows, or no shadows, with the large light source.

Now let's look at a comparison

with and without a reflector brought in.

So we'll bring the reflector in,

take the reflector away,

we'll bring the reflector in,

and we'll take the reflector away.

So hopefully this demonstration gives you a clear idea how in certain circumstances,

we might want to use a broad, large light source.

And in other circumstances,

we might want to use a point, small light source to create texture and

strong shadows.

Next we're going to look at the three dimensionality

of objects

and lighting objects to reveal that.

Now every object is different.

We've either got different surface materials, different textures,

different smoothness,

or different shapes.

So for example, the human face and body has lots of irregularities

and different features and different shapes that will cause and cast

shadows.

The texture of skin is also quite unique, and reflects light in a certain way.

Here we have a cylinder, which is a sort of semi gloss

finish in metal.

And here we have a painted texture, which is a lot more mat, but still has

a slight shine to it.

So what I want to do is demonstrate how using different types of light sources

will reveal different things about the objects and different things to do with

their three dimensionality.

Now we'll start off just briefly here with the point light source again.

And we can see how the shadows are strongly affected by the position of

the light.

And wherever I move the light we'll see the changes.

But what I want you to notice

more importantly at this stage is the reflectance

of the objects.

So for example, if we look at the skin tones here, and I know this is actually

plastic, but if we look at the tones here it's quite a mat surface.

So there's not really any bright highlights, apart from the glossy part

there on

the lips.

But if we look at this metallic surface, we can see this big

stripe of light where we've got this really bright highlight.

And here on the semi

sort of mat painted surface, we have a highlight, but it's more spread out,

it's more diffused because the actual texture of the surface is changing the

appearance of that reflected light.

Now the reflectance

of the surface of these different objects

is greatly affected by the type of light source that we use and also by

its distance away from the subject.

So what I'd like to do next is do another side by side comparison

where we can see the effect of different types of light sources.

Let's have a look at the light sources that I'm going to use.

Well, we're going to use the point light source

that we've got here.

But I'm also going to do a version where we diffuse the point light source

by using a role of diffusion material

that is commonly used in photography.

I use this

a lot.

And I can diffuse

the point light source

and make it a much bigger light source

by

shining the light through the diffusion material.

And if we look from this side, as I change the distance of the light,

we can see how I make that light either bigger

or smaller.

Now, unlike a soft box,

this is considerably different because the light has a central radiating glow,

and then it gradually dims out.

It gradates away gradation.

It forms a feathered type of lighting.

Whereas a soft box is an evenly

illuminated, what we call a homogenous

light form.

So we're going to compare

the point light source,

the diffused gradation light source,

and

the homogenous

light box

with these different materials.

So here we can see, with the point light source, how we have strong, well

defined shadows cast by the nose and the neck.

And also you can see the strength of the shadows on the side of the face.

The other thing to notice is the overall clarity of the light, but

importantly are the specular highlights on the glossy parts of the body, around

the neck and the collar bone, and also on the lips.

And these are the characteristics

of a point light source.

Strong shadows and strong specular highlights.

With the soft box, we can see things are completely changed.

We have a broader, softer light, no specular highlights, because we are now

talking about a large, homogenous light source.

And the larger the light source than the reduction in specular highlights,

and also the reduction in the intensity, or the sharpness of the shadows.

Now we still have shadows, of course, because the light is directional it's

coming from one side.

The strength of the shadows, I should point out as well, are defined by the

amount of reflected light coming in from the studio around us.

So this is why they're not completely black.

In this example, we have a point light source behind a scrim and far away from

a scrim.

So effectively it is just creating a very large light source, because the

scrim is actually bigger than the soft box.

This is resulting in even softer light.

Remember, the larger the light relative to the subject, then the softer it will

appear on the subject.

So you can see here how the shadows appear softer.

The tone of the light overall is softer.

And we have this very soft, broad light created with the point light source far

away from the scrim.

As the point light source comes closer to the scrim, we still have

soft light, but we also have the inclusion of specular highlights.

So you can see on the collar bone, the neck and the chest area we have some

specular highlights coming back again.

But we still have relatively soft shadows and a relatively soft broad

light.

Because we have a combination of light.

Here we have light that is gradating across the scrimmer, is illuminating

the whole scrim.

But we have a stronger central point light source in the middle of the

scrimp, basically a ball of radiating light within the scrimp.

So we have this mixed lighting, which is what makes scrim lighting quite

unusual and interesting to work with.

In that by changing that distance of the point light source away from the

scrim, we can create some interesting effects

as we move to the different surfaces.

Here we have the gloss metal cylinder

and the semi mat

gray metal surface.

And with the point light source, you can see we've created a very fine

stripe of light on the gloss metal.

But on the semi mat painted surface, you can see how it diffuses

that point light source.

We have

strong shadows cast across the table from the objects, as you will see here.

As we change to the soft box, those strong shadows that were cast across

the table have now become very diffused and have almost disappeared.

You can see the diffusion

of the soft box in the gray paint has changed considerably compared to the

point light source.

But the interesting thing to note is, in the metal, glossy cylinder, we still

have a very bright, highly reflective light,

but which now a much wider stripe of light because it is simply reflecting a

much wider broader light source.

As we go to the light, far away from the scrimmer, that's a point light

source behind a scrimb.

Far away, we have a very, very soft light, very soft shadows

and very soft lighting in the diffused, gray painted surface.

But interesting to note here, we have a stripe of light in the metal cylinder,

but it is a gradated light.

Now the light is stronger on one side, so you can see it stronger on the

right, and then it gradually decreases in strength as we move to the left of

the cylinder.

And this is the gradation of light that you get with a scrim.

Now, if the light was so far away from the scrim that it was illuminate, the

whole scrim evenly there wouldn't be any gradation.

Some of the gradation you're seeing here could be because of the angle of

the scrim to the cylinder,

but also because the point light source may be

further away on one side of the scrim than the other, so it's brighter on one

side and glorates across the scrip.

As we bring the point light source closer to the scrim,

we see the gradation of light again even more effectively.

You can see on the right side of the cylinder, the glossy cylinder, the

brighter stripe of light.

And then it feathers away

to a

dimmer light as it goes across

that cylinder.

The diffused light on the metal

painted metal still looks

similar to the soft box and to the

large skim version.

But you can still see that there is a stronger light on one side of that

diffused reflection in that gray paint.

So hopefully these various examples have allowed you to see and understand

better the differences between photographing, something like skin

texture compared to glossy or intermediate textures, and how they all

react differently to the light,

and how they all react differently to different types of lighting.

In this next example, we're going to look at one of the other fundamental

parts of light and understanding light.

And that is the inverse

square law.

Now there are two sections to this, if you like.

One is how the inverse square law will affect the brightness range on one

object compared to another object.

And the other is how the distance

from our subject, how the light source distance and then the relative light

size, will

affect, or not affect, the

change in the lighting style on the main subject.

Now if we take a look at the lighting that I've got set up at the moment, you

can see that I've got a very large soft box.

So this is the 120 centimeter by 180 centimeter soft box is a very big soft

box.

And you can see I've got it at about arms' length away from our subject.

Now

let's just, compare that a moment to how we perceive

the size of the light source

from the perspective

of our subject.

So at this position, the light source looks about this size.

Now what that tells me is that I could actually introduce

another light source, an alternative one.

Let me just put this one on a moment.

And if I bring this light source

into

about this position

at about here,

then I could get this light source

to emulate

the same visual size, from my subject's perspective,

as the larger light source that was further away.

So effectively

this light source looks

as large as the other light source to my subject,

simply because it's closer,

however,

will be an effective change in what the lighting does because of the inverse

square law.

And to demonstrate that,

I'm going to shoot

a number of pictures with the large light source further away, and then the

smaller light source closer to emulate the same size as the light, a larger

light source, and we'll see those key differences.

So let's start shooting a picture.

Now before I get started, let me just explain this light source here is not

being used.

This is just to illuminate me for the video.

The light st I've shown you so far have had the modelling lamp on.

That is the continuous light, but that's not actually used to take the

picture.

Inside of these units is the flash tube, which fires

a burst of flush.

We'll be explaining more about how studio flashes work in one of the next

chapters.

So here we're going to use flash

from the studio light to photograph

the subject with the other camera alongside.

And the picture is going to come into the computer

so here's our first picture.

Let's take a look.

And there we go.

So we can see immediately

with the large soft box, we've got a nice soft light.

There are some shadows here, but they're soft shadows.

They're not harshly sharply defined shadows.

Now the things to look at here, and the things that we're going to compare,

are the lighting on our main subject,

the lighting on this camera, and the light level on the background.

I'm now going to change the light source for the smaller soft box, but

bring that smaller soft box closer so that it is visually the same size from

the perspective of our subject.

Now I'm just moving this light source back so that when I'm looking from

our dummy

model's perspective,

that this light source looks the same relative size.

This needs to go up slightly.

We're just going to check

that lines up there.

That lines up there, probably coming a little bit closer.

So now, from our subject's perspective, this light source looks the same size

as the previous light source.

So I'm going to turn the other light source off now

and just leave this one on.

So that one goes off.

And now we should have the same

style of lighting in terms of the relative softness.

Now, one of the things I will have to do is adjust the power of this light

so that the exposure

on our dummy

is the same as the exposure in the other shot.

So that it's an equal and fair comparison.

I need to reduce the power on this

flash

a little bit.

Ok, so taking the photo with the smaller soft box, but in the closer position,

and here we go.

Here's an interesting result.

This is exactly what I expected to see, because we can't break the law of physics.

And let's have a look at what we're seeing.

If we look at the lighting on the dummy, on the face, the shadows, the

contours of the shadows, and we compare it to our previous shot.

They're actually identical.

They're exactly the same shadows, exactly the same position, exactly the

same sort of softness to the light.

In terms of the shadows.

The exposure on the skin of the dummy is the same intensity because I've

adjusted the power of the smaller light down a little bit, because it's closer,

so that the exposure ends up the same.

So we have the same skin tone level

on the two shots.

What you will notice, because of the inverse square law though is now that

our light sources closer,

you will see that the shadows are darker and stronger than they were before.

You will also see that the background is darker than it was before.

And you'll also see that this camera on the left hand side is now darker than

it was before.

So whilst the exposure is correct and equivalent here, although it looks a

little bit different, it looks different because of contrast, because

the background is darker.

We actually take a measurement.

If I measure the light value, let's just measure it on the nose.

There we're running at 59 in the red, 53 in the green and 41 in the blue.

So I was call out about

41.

If I go to the previous shot,

we're running at

554938.

So very, very close

in exposure there we've got

585241.

So pretty much identical in exposure there on that measurement on the nose.

And if we compare the two shots, you can see the actual skin tone values are

about the same exposure.

But notice how everything else changes.

And this is because of the inverse square law.

As that light gets closer to our subject,

its relative size is the same as the large soft box.

So the style of the lighting remains the same.

But the effect of the lighting on other objects that are further away

dramatically changes.

And in this instance, as you can see, the fall off of light, the power of the

light reduces more quickly because the light source was closer to our subject.

And that results in near by objects being darker,

shadows being darker, and the objects in the distance

also being darker.

So that is fundamentally

the effect of the inverse square law.

When you have a light closer to your subject than a larger light of the same

apparent size further away.

And that the effect and the result that you get.

And this is very important to remember, because when your lighting group shots

or two people together, this person would be correctly exposed, and this

one would be too dark.

So to overcome that problem,

you would need to use a bigger, soft box

from further away, so that they were both more evenly illuminated.

That is one of the most fundamental parts

in photography, terms of the inverse square law.

And hopefully that demonstration

showed you

it clearly.

The next thing we're going to look at now is the color spectrum of light.

So to understand light further, we need to explore a little bit about the

physics of light, in terms of the visible wavelengths of light.

Visible light

is part of the electro magnetic magnetic spectrum.

And by visible light, I mean light that our eyes are receptive to, light that

our eyes can see.

But if we take a look at the electromagnetic

spectrum, we can see that it's just a series of

wavelengths,

starting with short wavelengths in cosmic rays,

moving up through gamma rays, x rays, ultraviolet, infrared,

all the way up to

radio Waves.

Now the visible light section just forms this small portion here, which

expanded out into this block, we can see, runs from about 317

nanometers

all the way up to about 713

nanometers

as it starts to go into the infrared spectrum.

Now our eyes are receptive

to that

frequencies, those frequencies of

nanometers, those frequencies of wavelengths as different colors.

Each of those different set of wavelengths

we perceive as being color.

So down here in the 400 to 45500

nanometer end, we're looking at the ultraviolet into the blues.

In the 600 nanometers, we're seeing things as yellow, and at 700 nanometers

we're seeing them as red.

But if we take a look at our next slide,

and we can see how that

spectrum of color

depending on the light source that it's coming from.

And this is a very important thing to note in photography.

If we take a look at daylight,

and this is assessed, or based on midday sun, with a blue sky, we can see

that we have a very broad spectrum

of the frequencies.

So a fairly even balance of blue light through to green yellow,

all the way through to red.

Now daylight is coming from an incandescent source, such as the sun

heated source.

And actually incandescent sources are quite a lot warmer.

But daylight also includes the light from the sky, which has a lot of blue

light.

So we have this broad spectrum.

And we use daylight

with what we call color temperature, Kelvin color temperature of about 500600,

as the sort of benchmark for photography.

So all flash guns and studio flashes and things like hmi lights are tuned

and balanced to work at 500600

Calvin with a full spectrum

to give us the same lighting effect

in terms of color and spectrum as daylight is perceived here on this

particular graph,

if we move over to incandescent light, so say, for example, a candle burning,

we can see that it has a full broad spectrum with no gaps in it.

But it's very, much stronger in the warm tones in the reds and the oranges.

And that's why we perceive candle light as being quite warm in color, quite

yellow in colour.

As you can see from the graph here.

Halogen light

also has a good full spectrum.

There are no gaps in the spectrum, but you can see, again, it's stronger in

the reds and in the greens, in this case, quite low in the blues.

If we look at cool white LED lighting, we can see it's got quite a peak of

strength in the blue area.

And if you're buying

LED lighting for photography, you must be careful

on its ability to describe the spectrum or its ability to show the full

spectrum.

LEDs have come on a long, long way in recent years.

And they now have LEDs with a very high color index.

If we're looking at a color index suitable for photography, we're going

to need above 9495.

Otherwise, LEDs will look a little bit on the blue side

and missing

certain parts of the spectrum.

Now, the worst one for photography

is fluorescent lighting, standard fluorescent tubes that you might find

in a warehouse or a

factory or a supermarket or even at home, if we look at the spectrum for

fluorescent tubes, you can see that we've got a peak of red, a peak of

green and a peak of blue.

Now if we mix red, green and blue light,

our eyes perceive it as white.

So to our eyes,

we will accept light from fluorescent lights as being white.

But actually when we record it on photographic film or on a photographic

digital sensor, there is so much missing from the spectrum that the

color looks a little bit

odd.

So we talk about light

in terms of usability

or usefulness for photography, in terms of the broadness of its spectrum.

If we have daylight, we have a good broad spectrum.

So it means the colors in our pictures will be vibrant and everything will be

recorded appropriately.

If we're using

flashlight or hmi lighting, studio lighting, it also has a full broad

spectrum.

But if we were to photograph something using fluorescent lights, whilst it

might look ok to our eye, the resulting images would not be as clean and as

bright or as colorful as we get with a studio flashlight.

To demonstrate that, I'm going to shoot some examples

underfluorescent lighting and shoot some examples with broad spectrum flashlighting

so that you can see the difference in results.

So to demonstrate what we could call the cleanliness

of the light,

I'm going to use full spectrum studio flashlighting.

Now all studio flashlighting

should give you a good quality full spectrum

equivalent to daylight.

Some cheaper flash brands don't necessarily give you it repetitively

or as accurately on every flash.

But here with this particular system, we're going to get very accurate full

color spectrum.

I have a color test chart that we can use as a reference, and I have our

dummy in position.

I have a large soft box to illuminate

this area, and I have a smaller soft box

to illuminate

the wall behind.

I'm going to take that as our reference shot of a full spectrum

daylight balance light.

And then I'm going to turn these lights off and just use the fluorescent lights

that we have mounted in the ceiling here in the studio,

which are actually quite high quality fluorescent lights.

And we'll look at the difference between the full spectrum daylight

balance and the fluorescent, and have a look at how it affects the colors

of the skin tones and the colors on the chart.

So here's my test shot

and if we take a look

more closely,

we can see

the purity of the colors

detailed in the test chart,

the purity of the lighting here.

And we can see that the color balance is set at 500600,

which is

the color celvin temperature of

daylight.

And if we just take a couple of measurements, just to have a look

around here, this is almost neutral at 4344

and 42.

So it's slightly off neutral.

I'm just going to

correct

for that here.

So now we've neutralized the shot

we have

2829204444616061.

So all good neutrals there.

And then we've got the measurements on the colors

in the chart, and they all look as they should.

The purity of it all looks good.

Our background is pretty much neutral, which it should be as well, because

it's a white background, and everything looks clean

and the right level in the right contrast, as I would expect from studio lighting.

We're now going to switch over

to fluorescent lights as a comparison.

So that's the fluorescent lights on.

I'm going to turn the studio flashlights off,

and we're going to take

the same picture,

but we're going to have to adjust the

exposure, because now we're not using flesh,

and that's going to require a longer exposure.

And we'll see if we get the exposure, about the same,

looks a little bit dark there.

So I'm

going to lighten that up a little bit more.

Ok, so we've lightened the exposure up here.

Now the angle of light is not the same, but you can see clearly straightaway

that the color of the light

is completely different to the purity of color here.

So this is neutrally balanced for 500600

celvin color temperature with the flash,

and then leaving it at the same color balance.

You can see that this looks a bit sort of peachy yellow.

E, it's not easy to even really accurately describe

the color balance problem that we've got there.

But to give this a fair chance, what we need to do is to neutralize to one of

the gray tones,

which I'm going to do now.

And there I've neutralized.

So I've set that gray to be a neutral balance

in the same way that I set

the gray to be a neutral balance here.

If we look at the colors, though, on the cards, look at the lack of vibrancy

on the color in the color test chart when we're using fluorescent light

here with daylight balance, studio lighting.

And then with fluorescent lighting.

We can see clearly, there is a big difference in the saturation levels

of some of those colors.

Even the color in the skin tones of the dummy look different.

And the overall feeling

of the color is actually wrong.

And the reason it's wrong is,

as explained with the charts, is that there is a large part of the spectrum

missing from fluorescent lights, which means that certain colors are not able

to reflect those parts of the spectrum because they don't exist in that

particular light source.

There is enough part of the spectrum from fluorescent lights in peak, in the

red, in the green and the blue, to give us some impression of white light

or some reflection of color.

But it is nowhere near as pure and as clean as the light we get from studio flash.

And this is something quite important to keep in mind.

Because if you are using other forms of lighting for studio lighting other than

flash, such as continuous lighting

or

continuous LED lighting, then you do have to be careful that that type of

lighting has a full and broad spectrum.

Because as you can see here, when you're missing parts of the spectrum,

you will lack

color fidelity

contrast and punch to the images

that's

the majority of what we need to cover for understanding some of the key

principles of light.

We've looked at the hardness, the softness of light, the density of

shadows.

We've looked at the inverse square law, the change in apparent light source

size, and how that affects

objects that are

a certain distance away from our subject or in the background.

And now we've also looked at the purity of light.

When we're talking about the color spectrum,

there is also one other factor called color temperature.

And color temperature

is the overall color balance of the light, whether it's warm light or cold

light.

So later in the day, when the sun is setting, the color temperature is a lot

warmer.

It's around about 300200

or 300600

when it's the middle of the day, it's a lot cooler, around about 500600

Calvin.

And on a cloudy day, it could be 9000 Kelvin.

It's a lot cooler as well.

It doesn't mean that it's missing part the spectrum.

It just means that it's shifted more towards the red end of the spectrum, or

more towards the blue end of the spectrum that's a big difference

compared to this particular light right now, which is actually missing part of

the spectrum

and will never reveal all of the colors accurately