Day 20 Friday 14th October 2011

Friday 14th October 2011 Lighting Workshop 10:00

10:00 Talk on Light and Dark ' Chairoscudo'

http://www.youtube.com/user/EFPlighting#p/a/u/2/7uwR14oG7qA



During the talk Jonathan explained the days tasks, and explained the equipment and concepts behind the tasks.Also discussed and explained were a number of technical lighting terms such as:

Edge Transfer (Shadow Edge Transfer) The area between light and dark (the transitional area on the subject) http://www.5min.com/Video/Shadow-Edge-Transfers-in-Photography-164049301

Coverage: The light falling  upon the subject (hot spots and centre weight etc)

Shadow Definition: Sharpness or softness

Shadow Contrast: Density

11:00 Today's workshop was focused on allowing us to experiment with the position of lighting in relation to the subject and background, also hard and soft lighting was experimented with. Thus allowing us to understand the differences created by these these changes.

We were set two tasks which consisted of using hard lighting to illuminate a still life strait on (from the direction of the camera) and then at an angle. We then repeated this task using soft lighting.

We set up the equipment and the set ourselves again (the camera being the 4x5 Horseman).
Once again we used the tilt and shift function of the camera, and this time we also used the rise and fall function to capture the full height of the item we photographed.
As usual a quickdisc was used to ensure correct compensation to allow for the focal length of the camera (as adjusted by the bellows)
Film used was both black and white and then colour.

A number of salient points were communicated during the day, and were of note: "The closer the soft box to the subject, the more diffuse the light"; "The bigger the soft box the more diffused the light becomes"; "With film having five stops (and a DSLR having 11) of latitude, to make your background fully dark when shooting film you need five or more stops differentiation between it and the subject".
The advantages of different lighting systems were discussed, and Jonathan shot images on a whista (using a Polaroid back) to demonstrate the effects of the changes made to the set up of the lighting equipment.