Quality of light describes the contrast in your image. The first factor that describes the quality of light is the light size. A small source of light creates bright highlights and deep dark shadows. It creates harsh lighting on the subject. A larger source of light can soften the shadows and highlights. The second factor is the distance from your light to the subject. In this blog post we will define some different sources of lights that can be used at studio. But first we just review some terms that are used in photography:
Quality of Light
Quality of light describes the contrast in your image. The first factor that describes the quality of light is the light size. A small source of light creates bright highlights and deep dark shadows. It creates harsh lighting on the subject. A larger source of light can soften the shadows and highlights. The second factor is the distance from your light to the subject. In this blog post we will define some different sources of lights that can be used at studio. But first we just review some terms that are used in photography:
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Specular Highlight:
When the light hits a subject, it reflects off the subject. Different materials reflect varied amount of light. If you light up your model at studio, you see the brightest part on the cheek. So this term refers to the size and brightness of the reflection of your light source.
Edge Transfer:
It’s the line that seperated the highlights from the shadows.
Harsh Light:
A type of lighting that creates sharp edge transfer. It means that the transition from the highlights to shadows is very fast. Therefore it creates sharp and dark edge shadows on your subject.
Soft Light:
A type of lighting with soft edge transfer. Therefore the transition from the highlights to shadows occures smoothly.
Now lets have a look on different light qualities:
Bare Bulbs:
“Bare bulb” is a source of light without a reflector or modifier. This light illuminates the environment in 360 degrees. It shines simillar to the sun. Therefore it creates harsh shadows on the subject.
In order to have a better light we can use “parabolic reflector”. A parabolic reflector could be mounted on the bare bulb and direct the light to specific direction. It narrows the light and turns the bare light to spot light.
Beauty Dishes:
It’s a light modifier which is wider and narrower version of parabolic reflector. It creates a soft contrast on your subject.
Scrim:
It’s a piece of translucent fabric stretched over a frame and used for soften the harsh source of light. Sun is a good example. The sun light is too harsh on specific hours and doesn’t provide photographers a good source of light. Holding a scrim between the sun and your subject solves the problem and it softens the sunlight effectively.
“Flat” is another type of reflector that is a large board.
Soft boxes:
Soft box is a light modifier with a front panel that is made of light diffuser material. The inside surfaces has been made of highly reflective fabric such as bright silver coated fabric. The light that shines out of the soft boxes produces a wall of light which is equal at all points. Remember that the small soft box creates harsh quality of light while the larger soft box creates softer quality of light.
Remember that reflectors are in different colors such as silver, gold, white, black and translucent. Now the question is that how to choose the color. Silver side is great when you have not strong source of light and it brightens the shadows effectively and doesn’t affect the color of light. You should use the golden side to warm up the tone of the photo. The white side will be effective when there is a strong source of light. It creates clean and soft bright shadows however you need to hold it close enough to your model. Black side reduces the highlight on your model’s face. Translucent surface is good for holding above your model in order to soften the sunlight on your model.
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