Theory Notes

Soft light

When using soft light, it creates a "wrap" effecto on the object. The light creates a shodow casting from the object and also creates a soft outline of the object. There are a few factors that make the light softer:

• The distance of the light, the closer the softer.


• The size of the light, the larger the softer.


• The angle of the light, the bigger the angle the softer.
  

The uses of Soft Light:

• To make the object look nicer, to reduce the wrinkles that a person has.
  


• To have light without creating a shawdow.
  

This is a soft light studio and as youcan see the photographetr uses white sheets to abosorb some of the light from the side of the focused area.

Hard Light

Hard light creates a shadow over an object and the appearence of the shadow depends on the type of light source you use. Some lighting can create a nice crisp shadow over the object and some other lighting can create a very heavy shadow around the object. If you angle the hard light in an appropriate way you will be able to really see the texture of the object. This is done by creating a heavy shadow at an angle .

This is a way you can make hard light just with the flash of your camera and a piece of paper. Just bend the paper and put one end in front of the flash and the light will reflect and create hard light.

Three-point Lighting

This lighting is the most common used method in film and photography. If a photographer decides to use this method then they have complete control of how they want to light up their object. While the photographer is lighting the object with this method they have to remember to watch the shadow that they are creating. The three lights that are used in this method are The key light, the back light and the fill light.

The Key light is the light that is directly focused on the object. When indoors the key light is usually a special light or the camera's flash but when outdoors the sun usually acts as the key light. If the photographer dicides to shoot outside they now cannot move the key light to fight around the subject they now have to move the subject to fit in the position of the key light, the sun.

The fill light is positioned to the side of the subject but lower than the key light. This balances out the shadow on the subject. The fill light is usually softer than the key light.

The backlight is placed to focus on the back of the subject. This creates a rim for the subject. This back light is also used to separate the subject from the background.

This is a model of the most common method of three-point lighting. It looks very simple to set up, you just need to know the settings of the lights.