Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Justin, hello,
and today we're gonna cover kind
of a kind of basic topic, but what I get
asked about all the time, we always do
different types of lighting, and we light
up different scenarios,
People always ask me like kind of
what's a good classic three-point lighting,
for like a portrait.
So I thought we would do that today.
I'm just gonna walk through, we'll
build it out a little bit and I'll kind of
build... now three-point lighting can be a
lot of different things.
It just basically means you have three
sources, which we do, but I'm gonna build
kind of the most common for what I
would use for how Justin's dressed here
...kind of dressed in
like a nice suit jacket, and that's kind
of a classic shot.
So let me show you the
lights here, so first time I set up my
background light here.
This is a Profoto B2 head,
and I've got a grid on it, so
this is basically going to give us our
background light.
So the first light in
our series is gonna be the background.
A lot of times when I'm setting up lights,
I'll set up the the key-light first, but
when you're doing this for a project you
might actually be setting up before your
subject is there. So sometimes throwing
up the light, that you could definitely
know is gonna work.
First will work for you...
so again this is in my, my C
group, and I just have the controller
here in my pocket.
Just so you guys can see them, I'll turn
the modeling light on.. you
guys can probably see that, and what
we're gonna do is we'll adjust it up, so
it's going to give us a nice circle of light.
I'm gonna hide it behind his
shoulders, and it's going to give us kind
of a spread on this gray background.
I'll go up and down depending on... as I'd get
set up where I want to be, but that'll
basically really want to be the second
light in our scenario.
Again I'm building backwards, this is
going to be our separation...
or hair light, and that one is just a 1
by 3 strip, and we've talked about this
before, when you're setting up a
background separation type light here,
what you want to do is put it so that
it's kind of feathering off on the
subject, not point it directly at them!
So this is a good place to start, and then
finally we're gonna have our key light,
and we can have Justin come in for this
one. So we can see where we put it.
This one is going to be a 2ft x 3 ft softbox
kind of classic portrait... type of thing,
and we're going to go kind of to a three-
quarter, a 45-degree here, so it's gonna
throw some shadow on his face,
but in you know an attractive way, so we
can see right not a badge... a manly way,
right we want to show shadow,
you know a lot of times I'll say
that when we're shooting a female subject.
I almost always put the little
light in the center, to have the shadows
coming down, for a guy you know,
it's nice to have a little shadow,
this will also work for a female subject as well,
but it wouldn't necessarily be my first choice,
okay, so now those lights are in place,
grab my camera.
I have my 85 which is a nice kind
of focal length for a portrait, and I'm
not getting...
I'm gonna go like head and
shoulders a little bit more, not the head
and shoulders for like shampoo...
I mean maybe...
and the first thing I might
do is I might turn all my lights off as
always, and we're gonna make a shot with
no light, no flashlight I should say.
250th f/8 100 ISO,
that gets rid of all
the light in the space
so we know we're
only working with our flash
and what we're gonna do here is
I'm gonna set them up one at a time,
just so you guys can see,
so I'm gonna turn off, just gonna
bring in the A group which is again our
key-light, gonna focus on the eyes.
Here we go, set my focus point.
See and that gives us a nice dramatic portrait.
But of course he's nice and lit there,
the background goes very dark, you know
there's enough light wrapping around
that we probably even get away with this.
If you want then super dramatic but we
want to go classic... Plus that would only
be one point.
One point it to at this point...
this is now my separation light as well,
that gives us that three dimensionality
right there, and we can see that we're
definitely getting some spread.
So the background is getting a little bit
lighter gray, but to give us that full
separation, we're gonna add our C light.
By the way I'm in TTL right now
guys, and everything seems to be good.
Of course that's the way you drinks TTL...
is by saying that it looks good!
There we go, all right now I'm going to tweak.
So what I like to do, since we want
to keep things consistent, is I'm gonna
switch off TTL, and I'm going to just
adjust my light.
So I'm gonna bring my C light down,
which is my background light,
down by half a stop.
I think, I think it's a bit too bright,
there we go, nice and classic.
I'm just gonna kind of look at this.
Yeah I have detail in the highlights,
my neutral looks good, we have
separation, yeah, this looks pretty nice,
so we'll shoot a few like this.
I do like to be on a tripod just to keep the stuff
set, and just work through a little bit
at a time.
Shoot some classic shots, cool,
all right, that works.
That's really easy right, when did that be
easy... so a variation
on this, if you want, if you didn't need
your background to be lit up for
instance, we could add a fill light instead.
So we could move, you know, let's say
this light to the fill, because I only
have these modifiers that I'm not gonna
fill with a small hard light, that
wouldn't make any sense to me.
So if I want to do that kind of a
scenario, I'm actually gonna switch this guy.
Do my separation light, and move the
strip up here for a fill.
So you want your fill light to be generally
on your camera access.
You don't want to create its own set of shadows.
So let's put that there and then I'll move
this guy over here for my separation.
We'll see what that looks like.
The grits kind of tight here, so I'm
gonna turn on my modelling light, so I can
aim it.
See that... not too shabby...
Okay this guy.. it's gonna come from the
front be my fill....
so probably, well you know what...
TTL has been good to us...
let's just see what happens.
We'll throw a TTL on.
This is where it becomes a mess...
Yeah, pretty darn good,
so now we've got again a darker
background, but now we have more fill on
this side.
That's gonna be a little bit
more flattering, and again we're still
three point light.
I feel like that background light's a smidge hot.
My C light some in this scenario, so I'm
gonna turn it down.
I'm gonna turn down one full stop,
Switch to TTL trying to see....
like down one full stop.
There we go...
also looks good.
So let's shoot a few like this,
so again still three-point lighting,
just different variety.
So there is in fact a single
hair right here, which I actually really
like, but later you might hate that.
So let's just fix that for a couple...
exactly..
yeah I actually like it, but I'm like hmm...
I don't know maybe, not right,
so alright, so there you go.
f/8 gives me plenty of room to move
again I am on a tripod...
consistency... simple as that.
Now I've got two options here...
yeah these are nice...
let's see, we got that.
I know we've got the more classic,
with the background light.
Both work, both are nice, you know,
and they're both three-point lighting,
so you could have almost any kind of
variety of things with this right?
It just means you're using three points.
There could be this, we could have done...
you know, I mean obviously you're always
gonna want a key light, but you could do
two separation lights, you could light the
background completely different.
Three-point means... that you're gonna have
three points of light hitting your subject.
One of them could even be a reflector
technically, if you want to consider that.
So you can do it with two lights, but
this is a good classic way to light.
You can again, if you're trying to get a
more flattering type of light, you might want
to go with fill... fill and key....
If you want something more dramatic,
go with the... you know,
let the the key be your only light
on the face, and let it kind of drop off
which I kind of like for male subjects.
But I will put Justin's information in
the description, you guys can follow him
make sure to subscribe.
You're welcome.
Be sure to subscribe to
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@DanielNortonPhotographer
and I'll see you next
time OnSet.