The Art of Light

Introduction to Lighting Natural Lighting pictorial lighting Hard light and soft light Basic light sources

Naturalism and Pictorialism Naturalism : Follow the logical position of light sources in a scene. This is often referred to as motivated lighting. Pictorialism: allow the use of light angles that violated this logic, if they achieve a more pleasing picture as a result.

Naturalism Pictorialism

To Achieve the “Look” Motivated Lighting: justify the logical light source

To Achieve the “Look” Lighting Planes: to give the perception of depth

Direction of Light The direction from which the light comes suggests the mood of the scene, the time of the day, and the typle of location

Direction of Light It models the objects in the scene, bring out their shape and texture.

High Key Scene Low Key Scene

Mixed Lighting Scene

Basic lighting sources Key light: is the dominant source of light. It usually establishes character and mood of the shot. Fill light: Fill light gives the appearance of ambient light and determines the mood by keeping shadows dark or by lightening them. Back light: is designed to separate the actors from the background. This adds three-dimensionality to the picture.

Control the Available light Identify principal light sources Identify the Key, back and fill lights from a scene How to light by positioning

Filters Color correction filters Neutral density filters Effects filters

Color Correction Filters Color correction filters are used when shooting tungsten-balanced film of doors or when using daylight balanced color film indoors. 85 filters:when shooting tungsten-balanced color film out of doors. 85(the most commonly used), 85B, 85C 80 filters:When using daylight-balanced color film indoors.

Neutral Density Filters To cut down overall brightness and reduce all colors equally. When to use ND filters Most common used: ND 0.3, ND 0.6 and ND 0.9, need to increasing exposure (stops) in 1, 2 and 3 stops

Effects Filters Diffusion filters, Nets, Ultraviolet (UV) filters: The filter most often used for cutting haze and slightly warming the scene is the Sky 1-A. If you don’t want to extra warmth of Skylight filter, Haze 1 and 2A can be used Fog filter Low contrast filters: produce less halation and less softening than fog filter. (Tiffen Ultra Contrast filter) Polarizing filter: light striking an object radiates in all directions Soft contrast filters Graduated filters