Studio and Location Lighting Techniques
This section covers Studio and Location Lighting Techniques: light placement, ratio control, modifiers, colour temperature matching and safe working on location.
Core rules
- Three-point lighting uses key, fill and back or rim light. Background and hair lights are optional.
- Lighting ratio compares key plus fill on the lit side with fill alone on the shadow side. Equal key and fill gives 2:1; fill one stop down gives 3:1; fill two stops down gives 5:1.
- Hard light comes from a small source and gives sharp shadows and high contrast. Soft light comes from a large source relative to the subject and gives broad shadows. Move the modifier closer to soften and increase fall-off.
- Modifiers include softbox, umbrella, beauty dish, snoot, grid, barn doors, scrim, flag and reflector. Flags cut spill; reflectors lift shadows.
- Inverse-square law: light falls off rapidly, so a background close to the subject may need separate control.
- Colour balance: match flash at about 5500 K to ambient light; use CT gels such as full CTO for tungsten balance and full CTB for daylight conversion, plus diffusion or ND to manage brightness.
- Location: open shade is soft and cool; golden hour is warm and low-contrast; mixed practicals should be intentional.
Worked example
Key light meters f/8 and fill meters f/5.6. Reasoning: f/5.6 is one stop less than f/8, so fill contributes half the key illumination. On the shadow side only fill is present; on the lit side key plus fill are present. Ratio is (2+1):1 = 3:1. For 2:1, raise fill to f/8; for 5:1, drop fill to f/4, two stops down.
Traps
- Calling equal key and fill a 1:1 ratio; the usual photographic ratio is 2:1 because the lit side receives both.
- Moving a softbox farther away to soften it; it becomes harder and dimmer.
- Ignoring inverse-square fall-off on group shots, so the back row is underexposed.
- Mixing daylight and tungsten without gels and then trying to fix everything in post.