Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Erica. Okay.
And today I'm gonna talk a little bit
about ratios.
People often ask well what
ratio are using for this 1:2, 2:5,
6:8, 9:12... those are common ratios I think,
we're not really gonna go over that
because I honestly feel, and I say this a
lot you got to kind of adjust things
till it looks right, but I want to talk
about kind of using your like hair light,
your, your key light and your background
light at different power settings to
change the vibe, which is basically
changing the ratio of your light.
So it's a pretty simple three-point lighting
setup here, I've got the Profoto 2x3
softbox, as the key behind us,
we have the Profoto 1 x 3 is kind of a
backlight, and then on the ground here
I've got a Profoto A1 just shooting
at the wall, which is gonna be our
background light, so I shouldn't say
backlight because when I say backlight,
it confuses people. I'll say hair light,
separation light, kicker light,
only things can we call it, okay so this is
the basic setup, right now I have it
exactly as you would expect, with our key
light giving the most light, kind of the
primary that our, our hair light is a
little bit over that to bring out some
highlights in our hair, and our
background light is lighting up the
background.
So it'll be white, so here we
go, take a look, perfect alright, so
beautiful, we've got kind of your classic
portrait light right?
We've got beautiful light across her face,
with some nice soft shadow fall off, her
hair is picking up just beautiful highlights
here from our hair light, and of course the
background is white as you would expect.
Cuz it is a white wall, and there you go
right. this is good, we could shoot a
couple like this, cuz you know why not!
Nice so essentially the way I'm set up
right now is, my key light or my softbox
is set on exposure right?
So I'm shooting f/8 at 1/200th of a second,
so this is set up is you were to meter it at
f/8, my hair light is about 2 stops over in this
case, sometimes you'll want it under,
sometimes you want the same, it depends
on the person, and how you want their
hair to look right?
And the background light is actually
about about two stops
over as well, to give us a super white
background, as opposed to just a regular
white background.
Alright so that looks
good, but if let's say we just want to
quickly add drama, I can either turn up
or down or off, as I will in this case
our background light.
Now we're gonna go with like a more of a
grayish dark background right?
Right and we can see how that
immediately changes our look, beautiful,
beautiful, right, and what's interesting
here is that, when you look at this, it
definitely picks up you know the, the,
when you see that do this it definitely
shows the hair light it actually almost
seems brighter.
That's because it, just compared to the
background, it's it's brighter, so it
definitely gives more that kind of that
three-dimensional vibe, or here you can
barely pick it up at all because the
background lights on.
So it's two different looks are very simple, but we
can also do is, we can kind of change our lights.
We can make our hair light our key in a
sense, by having her to turn
to like a profile right?
And for this what I'm going to do is
because that light is overexposed,
it's gonna be too bright on her face.
Now I'm actually going to adjust my
camera, I'm gonna go to f/11,
and what this will actually do is,
make the the background.. back hair light
separation light, on exposure right, and
the key-light, was the key-light actually
will now become a fill light, at two... at
two stops under, so this is our shadow
over here right, and now we have a very
dramatic shot, so let's see if that looks
like we should if you like, that good
beautiful,
good, beautiful, beautiful, just like that
right, and we can kind of bring that
around, skip this kind of, and should work
your shoulders around the other
way, so I get less light, there
we go, you face this way, shoulders and
then face, perfect it's beautiful.
Yeah so we look at these right,
and we're basically looking at this kind of
moody, like that yeah this is like extra
moody, you got moody...
then you got extra moody!
Yeah so we got that, let's, let's, let's
show, we got here, we got that, and then
we've got moody, but with some papow..
right,
and then we've got clean right, and all
we're really doing is changing kind of
the way the camera is sucking in the
light that we're throwing, right, we
haven't actually changed, well except for
turning the background light off, we
haven't changed any power settings on
the lights either, we're only doing the
camera, let me just, this is probably not
gonna look as good, why not end with a
bad one right, there, so let's do the
profile thing, go with the white
background, because I feel like it's
probably not the right vibe for it, but
you know what, we're here, and it's easy,
so white backgrounds backup, yeah it just
doesn't have that the right.. so not every
combination is gonna work, we got to
figure out what the right ones are for
our subject, and what we're shooting, so
let's go all the ways back on to where
we were, so I'm gonna actually,
everything's on now, so I'm gonna go back
down to f/8, and we're gonna work
towards the key-light again,
and we're gonna end with a nice LinkedIn
profile, good, good,
good, beautiful, good, beautiful, nice,
and simple, right, easy as that.
so really what you got to think about
when you're setting this stuff up...
as my great trip across this!
Is you gotta think what is
the the mood I'm trying to convey right?
Because you can do a lot with
three-point lighting, and you've probably
seen many videos where there'd like
certain different positions and people
are laying them out in different ways,
of the, thinking about when light hits a
subject, how it feels, and what, how that
that creates a different vibe, and that's
what we're doing, we're either
darker with some flair from the back,
gives some mood, the wide and open
makes it more friendly and inviting,
and those things are gonna be what
you're shooting for when you're trying to
figure out what ratio you want to put the lights at.
So I will put Erica's information in the
description, so you can follow her,
follow me Daniel Norton Photographer,
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and I'll see you next time OnSet.