Hey this is Daniel Norton,
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with Erica, and today I'm going to talk
about kind of why you might use a single
light versus using multiple light sources.
So we've got Erica here, and we're gonna basically
do you kind of some portraits,
and we're gonna kind of,
I'm gonna start with a
single light and generally if you're
gonna use a single light, a lot of times
you're gonna want to use some, you know a
soft light that's usually - single light
portraiture is generally soft, so I've
got my Chimera frame, 4-foot frame, four
feet is bigger than Erica, or just bigger
than the part of her that we're going... not
bigger than all of Erica,
but bigger than the part of her that's in this
shot right?
So it's gonna be soft,
I'm blasting through this thing with my
Profoto B1X, and I'm just gonna create a
nice wash of light over,
so let's see what that looks like.
Okay so I do have the A1 on top of my
camera, but I'm just using it as a remote.
I'm in TTL here focusing,
Here we go, there we go,
right, nice and soft, sharp image, she's
lit evenly, the wall is pretty white,
because you know inverse-square all that.
Let's do a couple like this, boom, so this
is great if you gonna have the person
moving around, because she has a little
more freedom right?
It's also good if you're shooting
somebody let's say that
you want to maybe cover blemishes, or
you don't really want to show detail, right,
because big soft light is gonna reduce
the amount of detail in your shot, also
clearly if I'm shooting multiple people
sometimes like let's say I'm doing some
groups or whatever, this is gonna be
great for that, nice and easy, nice and
fast, just like that, but since I am just
working with Erica, let's do something
more dramatic by using multiple lights.
Okay so we took down the big 4-foot
diffuser from Chimera,
with just the one light coming through.
That created a really beautiful light,
very versatile light,
but it was kind of flat you know,
maybe not the most interesting light.
Here we wanted something with a little
more character, so I've got more or less
the same amount of power,
but I'm spreading it out amongst a bunch
of lights.
I've got the Profoto B2 here, fitted with the
1 x 1.3 softbox,
this is giving us our key on
Erica's face, and it's gonna have quick
fall off to the, to the, to the dress,
so it's gonna basically be bright, and then
fall off, and then the background is
gonna get a smidge of light, but not too
much, it's gonna kind of almost be black
right there's gonna get a little bit of
light back there, now I've fitted this with the
CTO gel, so it's going to be on the warm
side, and what I'm doing is I'm
correcting at the camera for that, so we
should get neutral light on her face, and
then any other light in the scene will
be much bluer, and you'll see how we're
gonna use that in a second, because we
have basically three other lights here.
I've got two Profoto A 1's coming in
from the back to give us kind of the
wraparound kind of halo light,
but that looks pretty good,
but to get that really full superhero
feel, I have one more on the ground here,
were just shooting up at here, so we're
gonna have this full kind of light
wrapping around just blasting forward,
and this is all gonna have a blue tone
to it, so let's see what it looks like.
Okay, so first time to shoot with the key
here, I've got a A1 on top of my
camera, but I'm only using it as a
trigger.
Okay this is just the key light
so we can see it's a little darker.
I'm kind of going for that movie vibe.
By the way guys, I am shooting at f/18
because I'm trying to keep all the daylight out
of here, and also I want this is like
moody or feels so it's nice and crispy
and sharp right, that looks cool in and
of itself but what we're really gonna
fire this thing up with this, we're gonna
start turning stuff on, let's do the one
on the ground first, good, yeah, you can
see now we're getting some light on the
background, and then we're also doing
that glow, but that by itself just looks
like there's a fire or something below, a
blue fire at that below, all right so
we're gonna basically give her the full
superhero treatment by turning on the
other two lights that are back there to
give us full glow, need to make that
sound while we do it..
now the background is getting some light
even getting a little bit of flare over here
with the light coming in, we've got light all around,
some of it's hitting her cheek, really
creating a fun mood.
So let's shoot a few like this,
beautiful nice, good good,
beautiful, beautiful, right there.
Now what's great about this is...
we're basically getting again this gets
really kind of a cool vibe, cool, is that right
well getting a cool vibe, and we're doing it
really simply, like I could throw blue
gels on all my lights right, but instead
by making this light warm, and then
balancing to it, cuz that's the light
that's really hitting her where
I want to be neutral, all the rest just
naturally go blue.
So that's kind of a fun way to work with
that depending on the color.
Using complimentary color here
versus there, you could do blue here, and
then there's like a warm, you could do it
the opposite as well as you want right.
You see that right, blue and orange are
opposites.
Anyways one light versus multiple,
which one's right?
Neither one's right, right, there...
each one has their own vibe,
their own look, it really depends on
what you're going for, but do keep in
mind that if you're trying to shoot
something like the first shot, and you
only have this one softbox, it's not
gonna look the same right?
You got to kind of think about that,
if you are only able to use one light,
use a big light so it kind of wraps
around and fills things and
makes it even.
When using multiple lights,
you want to hit little areas with light,
to kind of have more mood, and feel to it
that's kind of the point so I will put
Erica's information in the description
for you guys to follow her, be sure to
follow me DanielNortonPhotographer
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you next time OnSet.