Balancing light - studio portraiture photography
Balancing light - studio portraiture photography | ||
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It's important to understand some of the principles that go into balancing light from several different sources in a single photograph. Here are some tenets to work by: The Inverse Square LawMoving a light source twice as far away reduces the light by 4x (not 2x). In photographic terms, that translates into two f-stops, not one f-stop, to compensate. For example, a light source placed 8 feet from your subject will provide one quarter as much illumination as the same source located just 4 feet from the subject. After moving the light twice as far away, you'd have to open up two f-stops to keep the same exposure. You can make the inverse square law work for you. If you find a source is too strong, either by itself or relative to other light sources you're using, simply moving it twice as far away will reduce its strength to one-quarter its previous value. Or, should you need more light, you can gain two f-stops by moving a light source twice as close. (Keep in mind that the softness of the light is affected by the movement, too.) There are times when you won't want to adjust the light intensity entirely by moving the light because, as you've learned, the farther a light source is from the subject, the "harder" it becomes. In those cases, you'll want to change the actual intensity of the light. This can be done by using a lower power setting on your flash, switching from, say, a highly reflective aluminum umbrella to a soft white umbrella, or by other means. | ||