When do you use lights?

Lighting is one of the key skills for any cameraman. Directors of Photography in the world of feature films, earn the big bucks because they know how to light.

In features, lighting is crucial to the story. Happy scenes need to look happy and tragic scenes need to look tragic. Lighting goes a long way towards helping create these moods.

But in the world of documentary film making and corporate video production, lighting can be a little less critical, but it’s still important to understand.

So when do you use lights?

It’s pretty rare for me not to use lights. While I may not use them to light up a whole scene, I like to use them for eye-light. This reflects in the eyes of the person on camera and makes their face come alive.

Modern cameras and LED lighting units, which can run off batteries, now make life a lot easier for the cameraman. Cameras have far more sensitive sensors, which means you don’t need as much light to get a good image and LED lighting means greater portability and little to no heat.

Prior to digital technology and LED lighting, we had to use mains powered tungsten lights with colour balancing gels and heat!

Typical scenarios

Most of my shooting and hence my lighting set ups fall into one of three categories:

• Office interiors with good natural and daylight balanced artificial light.
• Darker interiors – think coffee shop, church hall or lounge room
• Exteriors where I try to use the sun, although never as direct key light if I can help it.

Let’s take each of these in turn:

• Office interiors generally have enough light to get a good exposure. But offices are lit from above with ceiling lights. These are perfect for office work, but not very flattering on a subject’s face in a mid-shot. The top light causes shadows under the eyebrows and there is no eye-light. Using an LED light, softened by some diffusion will make a huge difference. It should be above the height of the lens and to one side of the subject so it casts a very slight nose shadow onto the top lip.
• Importantly it should be dialled in very gently so the effect is almost imperceptible. This angle should also give you a nice ‘eye-light’ or reflection in the eyes.
• It’s tempting to try and light the whole dark interior of a coffee shop or hall, but its much better (and easier) to go for pools of light, which have dark areas between them. I would use the same LED as above for front/key light and then add a back light. A back light should usually be at 180 degrees to the key light and shine on the hair and on the ‘off key’ side of the subject(s). Once you have set these and have the ratio right, you can use another light to create a pool of light in the background. This will often leave a dark area between the subject and the background, but that will give the shot depth. It will also save you from lighting the whole space.
• Exterior lighting really depends on what you’re shooting. Wide shots of cities or landscapes are obviously lit by the sun. It’s when you’re doing interviews of presenter to camera that you need to consider lighting. TV News presenters who report into news bulletins are usually outside places like Parliament House or a city landmark. They are generally shot in mid-shot which makes it easier to control the light on them. Like office lights, the sun is often overhead and is quite unflattering. The solution is to ‘shade’ the sunlight off them with a piece of diffusion held over their heads and use an LED light as a soft fill. This is a bit technical, but we have all seen the result on the evening news.

Modern cameras and battery powered LED lighting units make a camera operators job a whole lot easier, so don’t forget to take your light kit with you.