articles/Lighting/lightingfordigitalpart19-page2

Lighting for Digital Part 19 - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Dave Montizambert Published 01/04/2011

In this image of Judy ambient light control was very important because the actual background is not black; it was made up of many tones, few of which were truly black. Therefore for the background to appear black it must be underexposed by my lighting as well as by the fluorescent tube room lights. In the end, an extra minute or two addressing this contamination issue at the lighting stage is always preferable to a long bout of retouching or noticing it after the fact in the print and I'm sure you will agree that any amount of ambient corruption on your favourite uber goddess is unthinkable.

The Set-up:• An LR7 Lightrein 700 watt-second (WS) monoblock studio strobe fitted with a 24" Lightrein Octabox silver interior light-bank was positioned slightly behind and to the camera-right side of Judy. This main-light source sat some 4 feet away from her, and its power was set to create a correct exposure on Judy at the f8 camera setting (see lighting diagram, image 002). The light emitted from the Octabox is directed to light Judy's face, neck, and shoulders, however, it does spill down her body towards her feet and it does spill onto the camera lens, causing lens flare near the top right-side of the image frame.

• A 30˚ Light Tools Soft Egg Crate light-bank modifier grid is affixed to the front of the Octabox. The square cloth cells of the egg crate block most of the light from the lower regions of Judy and eliminate all lens flare .

• Two more LR7 700 WS mono-block studio strobes fitted with silver interior 28"x75" Lightrein strip light-banks were positioned 8 feet behind and to the right and left sides of Judy (see lighting diagram, image 002). 30˚ Soft Egg Crate lightbank modifier grids were affixed to the front of these two strip-lights to focus the light onto the subject and to eliminate light spill onto the background . The power on each of the separation lights was adjusted to give an f5.6 incident meter reading which creates a minus 1 incident ratio when the camera is set to f8. The incident meter readings of these two lightsources were obtained by placing the back of the meter against Judy and pointing the white dome of the meter directly at the light in question. To ensure accurate readings each separation-light was measured in turn, with a hand strategically placed to block the light from the other strip-light from the incident meter's white dome.

• A 36"x72" silver reflector was positioned 8 feet in front and to the camera-left side of Judy (see lighting diagram, image 002). This fill-reflector source redirected stray light from the main and separation lights into the subject's shadows. An incident meter reading from the subject plane back toward the reflector read f2.0 5⁄10, a minus 3half incident ratio which provides some subtle detail in the shadows on Judy. Notice the dim reflection of the silver reflector showing up on the shiny brass door handle in the background just to the camera-left side of Judy's butt, this was eliminated as seen in Image 008 by placing a black piece of paper over the handle.

• For the final touch, the black background was selected, deleted and replaced in Adobe Photoshop with an image of a lava cliff from Hawaii .

The purpose of placing the two separation lights behind Judy was to trace out her profile against the dark background with dramatic 'silvery-strips' of specular light-form. Since her face is in profile, a loose ¾ profile, her eye nearest the camera receives no light from the separation light and her far eye's iris and pupil have no catch light, making them appear dead. The addition of the gridded Octabox, main-light, wraps light a little further around her face bringing up her camera-side eye without killing the look of the extreme backlighting. Also take notice of the difference between Image 008 and Image 009. Image 008, which has egg crates on all lights, allows me to underexpose the background tones so far down in the grayscale that the whole background records as pure black. Image 009, which has no egg crates affixed to any of the light-banks, shows some detail in the background; this detail is caused by the non-gridded subject lights spilling onto the background

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1st Published 01/04/2011
last update 09/12/2022 14:55:52

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