Lighting 101 Part 1

In my never ending and new quest to maximize and control light in highlight and shadows, I have done a ton load of research, reading, listening, and attending over the past year and a half. I started off with the available light thing and moved to speedlites (Stobist style) and am now finding the challenge and technical application of studio lighting not only challenging but also rewarding.

Yes I bought a light meter, and no I do not use it as mush as I probably should. On a new setup I will use it to get me in the ball park but then move to the camera for blinkies and histogram. As far as light ratios go, I find direction much more important. The ratio is this... One light has to be more powerful than the other to give gradation of shadows. There, I used a big word so enough of the tech talk. When I am landing the jet, every landing is the same but different, you have to feel the moment. Lighting is much the same except you get another chance if you completely screw it up.

The image above is done with three lights, two Elinchrom RX600 monolites controlled with the Skyport triggers and a speed light gelled blue triggered with a Pocket Wizard. Combining the thought of metering and feeling I find it works best me to set the key or main light to the an arbitrary setting (best guess at this point using the modeling light) and meter that. Now I have some idea what to set the camera at. I will set for aperture priority for controlled depth of field and then adjust speed up to one stop below the maximum sync speed for good measure.

With the key light set approximately, I will light the background and adjust it so the exposure looks right (display & histogram) in camera. Yes if I have to make a serious adjustment to the key, I will bump the background light up or down as necessary. So here is the shot with just the background light.

Now I will add the fill light. In this case a second Elinchrom RX600 with a soft box attached. Feathering the soft box towards the camera so as not to over expose the background. With a hood on the 24-70 or 70-200 I do not get any flare from the light. A wider angle lens might require me to flag the light. So here is the fill light image.

Now I go back and look at how the key will work on the subject as it was originally set with my mug just to get something going. Here is the key only with the background.

And again the final image so you don't have to scroll back up to the top to see the difference.

Tomorrow I have some shots of how the studio was set up for this shot. Unfortunately in the blogger world you probably are not reading this on Thursday but sometime later in which you have already seen the studio set-up in Lighting 101 Part 2 which scrolls first making it historically the first part. I think I got that right!

Anyhow, Cya tomorrow... Doug