What is Light?
Light is a electromagnetic radiation. Electromagnetic radiation consists of many rays like gamma rays, X-rays, UV-rays, infrared rays and so many in that visible spectrum. You can see up to 400nm-700nm through human eye below 400nm are UV rays and above 700nm are infrared rays we cannot see these but camera can capture it when this happens.
It may affect the image quality or the color may also change so for that, there are UV filters and infrared filters are available in the market, these filter can be used.
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| Without UV filter With UV filter |
We will talk about it in detail in our future, now let us have a basic understanding about them.
So light travels in wave form in vacuum and travels straight, all these we learnt in our schools So this is a basic idea about light
Why light is important
Now lets see why light is important , before 30 or 40 years it was completely B/W photography. when you look at it there was only two colours Black & White and the shades in-between them.
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| Black and white image |
But looking at them we can understand clearly the subject, background, foreground and other elements in it. Reason for that there is only two colours but how could we understand it it's because of the light, those contrasts and shadows create a depth and separation so that will provide us an understanding.
Now normally when we look at an object and the distance near or far our mind reads it by capturing contrast and shadows present, understands how far or near the object is.
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| Contrast and shadows |
Light can contribute this much to a image. we all know without light everything will be dark even if we give the world's best photographer the world's best camera and ask him to shoot without light, even he can't produce a good output. So lighting is that much a important thing. These are all the basic importance of light.
Now the importance of light in film making In film making, we translate the mood and genre of the film to audience by lighting.
For a comedy film the lighting will be high key, at the same if it is a thriller it will be in low key so this lighting pattern describes the film's mood and vibe, apart from that, a character's psychological state can be translated through lighting and color patterns.
Movies which done this are Stanley Kubrick's The shining, Todd Phillips's Joker they would have played with the colours, so using colour and lighting we can translate what the character thinks. Apart from all this, in a frame where audience should look, where the focal point should be, even this can be achieved by a cinematographer through lighting in a frame.
There might be many elements in the frame but the audience should look at this particular element then if you light it out the eyes will automatically follow it, so it grabs their attention. So all these can be done using lighting.
Characteristics of Light
It has basically four characteristics 1.) Quality 2.) Quantity 3.) Color 4.) Direction so we are going to see about these now
1.Quality
Quality, How can we judge by looking at light whether it is good or bad quality? we cannot say it is whether good or bad but we can say hard light & soft light
How do you differentiate this hard light and soft light, a little science is involved in this, a law called as inverse law inverse square law if you cannot understand, a more basic idea is source of the light whether the source for the light is big or small and the distance from the subject to light, these things determines hard light or soft light.
Now What is hard light? When a light comes from a small source for example a candle, torchlight, phone flashlight, if we use such things as light source the shadows appear sharper placing your hand near a candle and see the sharpness of the shadow, so hard light causes shadow to be sharper.
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| Hard light |
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| Soft light |
If you look at soft light the light source is made to be bigger for example soft boxes are used, it enlarges the source and scatters the light coming from a smaller light source which makes the shadow to appear defined and soft this is called soft lighting.
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| Soft box |
We need not use soft light always and not use hard light at all there is nothing like that, for story telling in your film which suits better you can use it.
2.Quantity
Next is Quantity of light or Intensity of light at what amount the light falls upon the subject Now how to measure light is lux, foot candle (units of measuring light) How we measure the length through cms., mts., like that. Foot candles are used to measure the light there are light meters available to measure light.
DOP's always carry a light meter with them, using this they measure how much light should be in this frame and shoot, so quantity means, what happens when too much light falls & less light falls upon, about this. I think you will have a basic understanding of it.
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| Light Meter |
3.Direction
where we place the light, where the light comes from, where the light ends, this is it.
Between where you place the subject this is important in direction. if you keep the light source in different directions, the face shape of the subject changes. if you keep an light source opposite to your face it will be a flat light causing your face to be flat, without an dynamics in it.
So basically these four characteristics when we play with it, new techniques and concepts are born from it to change Quantity by changing hard light soft light changing the direction, changing the colour when you mix it, all new concepts and techniques arises, we will discuss all of it in future, this is the basic idea about light.
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