Indoor portrait photography lighting and its application of light ratio

Lead: A person's face is composed of many facets, but none of them are real facets. The face is a three-dimensional circle, and the job of portrait photographer is to express the outline and shape of the face, mainly through bright areas and shadows. Bright areas are those areas illuminated by light; Shadows are areas where there is no light. Bright areas and shadows * * * show fullness and shape together. Besides expressing three-dimensional sense, lighting is also closely related to pose, because you can't beautify and perfect the best pose without really mastering lighting skills. Moreover, lighting is an extension of pose, especially disguised pose. You can choose some lighting to hide or beautify the special parts of the subject's body or face. Let's take a look!

Indoor lighting:

1. Main and auxiliary lights:

Whether it is the main light and auxiliary light in the reflector or diffuser, such as parabolic reflector, reflective umbrella or soft box, it should be high-intensity light.

2. Disc reflector:

Is (usually called parabolic reflector) silver plated? Plates? You can concentrate the light inside and reflect it outward to the maximum extent. The light reflected by the parabolic reflector is still very bright. It produces a clear and bright area with a clear border at the edge of the shadow. In the whole bright area, there are often some small reflection areas illuminated by non-scattered light-this phenomenon is usually called bright area luster. Most photographers no longer use parabolic mirrors, but choose scattered primary and secondary light sources.

The light source of scattered light adopts a small reflector installed in a reflective umbrella or soft box to focus the light on the outermost translucent surface of the diffuser, which may be very large. Illuminate the subject, scattering light is better than non-scattering light. Whether they are called soft masks, reflective umbrellas, strip lights or other names given to them by manufacturers, these scattering devices have only one function: to change the irradiation direction of output light. When light passes through the scattering materials of these instruments, it will immediately bend in many directions, thus forming scattering. Scattered light is not only softened, but also the intensity of light is greatly reduced. The reason is that the original light refracts in countless directions, and the light is naturally extremely dispersed and its intensity is lost.

David? Bentley took this beautiful high-profile photo. White curtains with lace were used in the shooting scene, and soft light spilled through the curtains. In this example, the main light comes from the back of the main body, and there is a flexible frame in front of the main body. Illuminates all shadow areas, resulting in a light ratio of 2: 1. Using soft lighting close to the subject can produce beautiful ambient light with almost no shadow. David improved the exposure level of bright areas and kept the photo effect high-profile. This posture is simple and lovely.

In these two photos, you can see the difference between using direct light and scattered light. The above picture is a typical use of highly scattered light, and there is a halo around the contour of the main face. The light source seems to come from the window and the auxiliary light of the cool breeze and bright moon. By the way, this is a typical example of plane lighting. Most faces are illuminated by the main light.

Anthony? Kava took this impressive portrait of the model. He recently took some photos using her as a model for his publication. Anthony placed a parabolic reflector on the right side of the model to illuminate her body, and then he used a cluster lamp to illuminate her face (to narrow the beam). Parabolic mirrors and cluster lights produce much stronger light than light boxes and windows. By carefully observing the dark shadows on both sides of the background and the obvious shadows on her neck that can reflect the light lines, the direct light not only produces obvious shadows, but also forms layered bright areas on the outlined face. Pay attention to the luster of the model's nose and forehead.

Reflective umbrellas and soft boxes: the ideal lighting means for most portrait works. A single soft light will produce beautiful soft edge light with great tolerance, characterized by a large area of elegant bright areas, low light ratio and beautiful light. In order to make the soft box or reflective umbrella produce better effect, the light source should be closer to the subject. The farther the distance, the worse the scattering effect.

Reflective umbrellas vary according to the hue of the content. The light produced by the reflective umbrella with silver or gold plating inside is brighter and more directional than that produced by the white reflective umbrella. Silver-plated reflective umbrellas will also show tiny reflections in bright areas of the face. Some reflective umbrellas called zebra stripes are equipped with silver-white panels, and the light reflected by them is soft light reflecting highlights.

No matter what kind of reflective umbrella you need. Focus? . By adjusting the length of the exposed shaft of the reflective umbrella, the ideal light output can be obtained. When focusing the reflective umbrella, we should refer to the model light, so that we can see how much light is output through the surface of the reflective umbrella. When the perimeter of the light is approximately equal to the perimeter of the reflective umbrella, the focusing of the reflective umbrella is completed.

Brian King, who works in Cooperbury, Ohio, likes to use soft light. He either uses a huge flash in a 7-foot (2.13m) soft box, or uses three large windows as a huge surrounding soft box in his studio. In this portrait of a college student he took, he further softened the contrast of this soft music in Photoshop. Except for the light on his face, the light in other places is soft. Whenever you use a window lamp as the main light, put a big reflector near your face.

Bambi? Cantrell created this boldly cut portrait, highlighting the lines of the model's hair and neck. He used a huge soft box close to the model and placed a reflector on the right side of the camera. If you look carefully, you can see the reflection of the light source on the iris of the model.

The background light placed between the model and the background is a small light, which is used to separate the background from the object and create a sense of depth of the portrait. Hairstyle lamps are used to add subtle bright areas to hair and provide a three-dimensional sense.

The soft box is highly scattering, and after adding a double-layer gauze curtain (scattering material) on the surface of the lighting lamp, secondary scattering is formed. Some soft boxes have multiple electronic flash heads built in to increase the power and brightness of light. The soft box does not necessarily focus, because the light in the box is already in the position with the best shooting effect.

Brian? Kim uses very soft light to photograph his subjects. Combined with some minimalist retouching in Photoshop, his soft light is very distinctive. ? I try to use simple lighting. When I take close-ups or use window lights. I sometimes use a silver-plated reflector as an auxiliary light instead of a reflective umbrella. Our window lamp consists of three 3-foot by 6-foot (0.9 1m x 1.82m) windows, which are less than 2 feet apart (0.6 1m). When I shoot with the main light, I get as close to the subject as possible. Because the size and distance of the soft light box are very close, the eye light (the reflection formed on the iris of the subject) is large and beautiful most of the time.

Hair lighting and background lighting:

The hair light is placed behind the head of the main body. In the past, it was usually not scattered light, but a hood (an adjustable metal sheet attached to the lighting facilities to control the width of the irradiated light). At present, small scattering light sources such as strip lights are often used to illuminate hair and background, which are installed on the lighting system of hangers or ceilings. Hairstyle light is mainly used to form bright areas on the hair to increase the depth and three-dimensional sense of the portrait.

Background light:

It is used to illuminate the background and separate the subject from the background in tone. The background light is sometimes non-diffracting light, which is irradiated by a reflector with a hood installed on the bracket and placed directly behind the subject that the camera can't shoot. The background light can also be a scattering light source installed on the boom, which illuminates the background from the high side outside the screen (or two lights illuminate from both sides).

It should be noted that the intensity of background light, hairstyle light and contour light (another kind of light that illuminates the subject from the back) cannot exceed the main light. If the intensity of main light is f/8, then the intensity of background light, hairstyle light and side light should be f/5.6 or f/4. Otherwise, these lights will exceed the main light and destroy it? A kind of light? Effect.

Reflector:

The reflector includes any large white, silver-plated and gold-plated reflective surface to reflect light to the shadow area of the object. Now you can buy all kinds of mirrors, including folding mirrors that you can carry in your pocket. Silver-plated and gold-plated mirrors reflect more light than matte white or translucent mirrors. The gold-plated reflector is very suitable for outdoor auxiliary light to illuminate the shadow area, which needs warm auxiliary light.

When using the reflector, it should be placed not far in front of the subject. Be careful not to put it next to your face, because it looks like a secondary main light coming from the opposite side of the main light. Properly placed, the reflector will reflect part of the main light and project it to the darker side of the face, even the deepest shadow will show details.

Plane lighting and narrow lighting

Plane lighting:

There are two basic types of portraits. Flat light means that the main light illuminates the side of the face facing the camera (seeing clouds from the camera means seeing the side with more faces). Flat light is not used as frequently as narrow light, because it will make the outline of the non-critical side of the face look too dull. As I described in Chapter 9, plane lighting is often used to correct, widen a face that is too thin or too long, or illuminate a thin person.

Narrow light lighting:

Narrow light illumination means to illuminate the side of the face that deviates from the camera with the main light. Narrow light highlights the external contour of the face and can be used as a corrective lighting technology to reduce the face that is too wide or too round. When used with weak auxiliary light, narrow light illumination will produce dramatic lighting effects, with strong bright areas and deep shadows.

When scattering main light is used, the difference between plane illumination and narrow surface illumination is not obvious when non-scattering main light is used.

light ratio

Light ratio refers to the light intensity difference between the shadow area and the bright area of the face, and its expression is the ratio, for example, 3: 1, which means that the brightness of the bright area of the face is three times that of the shadow area.

Light ratio is very useful because it determines the overall contrast of portrait photos. They do not determine the contrast of the scene (determined by clothing, background and facial tone), but the illumination contrast measured on the subject. The light ratio indicates how much shadow detail can be displayed in the final portrait.

When measuring the light ratio, use the hand-held incident exposure meter to measure the intensity of auxiliary light on both sides of the face, and then measure the intensity of main light on one side of the face.