Introduction to light quality

Photography professional terms. Light quality refers to the soft and hard properties of the light used for photography. Can be divided into hard light and soft light.

Hard light is strong direct light, such as sunlight on a sunny day, spotlights in artificial lights, light from backlights, etc.

The physical characteristics of the subject surface illuminated by hard light are as follows: the light-receiving surface, backlight surface and projection are very bright, the contrast between light and dark is large, and the contrast effect is obvious, which helps to express the details of the light-receiving surface and texture, resulting in powerful, vivid and other perspective artistic effects.

Soft light is a diffusely scattered light that has no clear directionality and leaves no obvious shadow on the illuminated object. Such as sunlight in heavy fog, floodlight sources, etc.

Soft light is characterized by soft light, uniform intensity, small light ratio, little contrast in the image formed, and weak sense of subject and texture.