Deconstructing lighting
Albert Pedrosa
Photo Mania
I POSTED a photo on Facebook last week, and a photographer friend asked me to deconstruct the lighting I used in the shot.
This is my reply:
* 3 light setup
* Camera settings: f2.8, 125 ISO 100
* Ambient: f1.4, 125 ISO 400
* Fire: f2.8 – f3.5 ISO 100
* Light 1: camera left bounced on white wall f2
* Light 2: far right gridded f3.5
* Light 3: far left gridded f3.5
After posting my reply, I got a message from another photographer saying he tried to understand my lighting setup but just can’t figure out how to work with aperture values. I thought I’d answer his concern on how one works with aperture values especially when working with strobes, in this column.
A strobe is a light source that fires only once. This is totally different from continuous light. You cannot increase your exposure from strobes by decreasing the speed of your shutter speed, as strobes fire only once.
It’s the aperture that can control strobe light, since it goes through the aperture, whether it fires once or continuously.
That’s the reason why a handheld metering device that measures strobe through aperture reading and shutter speed is preset before measuring the light. The meter shows the aperture value of the light. The stronger the light the smaller the aperture circumference or bigger f-number. If your camera is set at f2.8, and the main light measures f3.5, then the image will come out a bit overexposed.
Light 2 and 3 should over expose the scene since I’m using 2.8 in my camera, but since I used a grid to narrow the light and only expose the subject and not the entire scene, you would see overexposed highlights in the direction of L2 and L3. I also intentionally made my main light, which is L1, to be underexposed by one-third so as not to over light the fire.
In this photo, the ambient light is not captured much except for the fluorescent light source on top. I actually measured the fire first with my light meter so I can set my base aperture. The rest of the lights are adjusted accordingly. This is what makes photography very interesting and challenging at the same time.
Keep on shooting, everyone!
photomania.sunstar@gmail.com www.grp.ph
