Reflector (photography)

The light guide explores in photography or in film and television (but also in stage technology ) with the design of a scene through the use of natural or artificial light. Your score is the illumination.

Light types and qualities

The lights can be distinguished by several criteria:

• (Technical ) origin: see also Natural light and artificial light
• Color: This can be described by the color temperature or, in particular by fluorescent and gas discharge lamps by the spectral composition.
• Duration of lighting: the sun, moon, lamps and fluorescent tubes provide a permanent light (see continuous light ), natural lightning or photographic flashlight illuminate the scene a short time and are thus able to stop motion.
• Hardness of Light: Point and flat but distant light sources provide a so-called hard light, which is characterized by high contrast and clearly recognizable shadow. Light Modifiers ( softboxes, reflectors) are able to produce soft light from hard light. An overcast sky is thus a huge softbox for the almost point-like sun. Likewise, extensive artificial light sources are available.
• The spatial extent of light: A light source can illuminate only a delimited area with edges more or less sharp (spot) or the entire room.
• Direction of light: when frontal light in the viewing direction of the camera, side light from the left or right, backlit against the viewing direction of the camera, light from above and light from below.

Basic elements of the light guide

• The guiding light. The viewing habits of the people are familiar from time immemorial with the light situation of a nearly point- shaped light source ( sun or moon). The classic illumination uses it and also sets a dominant light (often the only light in the scene ) also casts shadows. This is the guiding light. Often the scene is illuminated in the direction of the camera or from the left or right above the camera. A guide light from directly above the scene caused deep shadows in the eye sockets, a light from below also acts unusual and can provide very dramatic, eerie scenes. This also applies to a backlight as a guide light. The guiding light can illuminate not only the standing in the center of the scene objects and people, it is the preferred means to direct the viewer's attention on the essentials. The quality of light can be hard or soft.
• The whitening. Particularly hard guide lights or back- and sidelights lead to high lighting contrasts that could not be processed by the density range of the film or sensor. Some designs will also flattered by lower contrasts (eg the beauty light in portrait photography ). This is the task of lightening that will illuminate the light from the guide less taken areas stronger. For a soft, shadow throwing light is well suited not to take the guide light his dominance. Whitening can be used as artificial light sources or reflectors.
• (Effects lighting or edge, hair light, see also highlight ). This is a mostly directed from behind your subject light to help, for example, differentiate a human from the background (gloss in her hair ). The light intensity is often high, the quality of light hard.
• Other light sources. For example, for the illumination of the background; can also be done with transmitted light through the background (see also chamfer ) or to accentuate other parts of the subject.

Special effects

Wherein the mixture of light sources is to be noted that these may differ in the color temperature. If the resulting colors are not wanted in the picture, the light sources should have a uniform color temperature. This may be especially in whitening of pictures in natural light, or if the normal lighting should further act, change image effect considerably. May provide better results than fill-in reflectors.

An exaggerated whitening can completely change the perceived impression of the scene from the eye in nature. For example, this would completely suppress the candles lighting the inclusion of a cozy candlelit dinners with too much flash. Likewise, the viewer will expect the sunlit world outside the window appears brighter than the interior of the room. (see also: fill flash)

The combination of short bright light (flashlight ) with the ambient light can leave the otherwise static photo with correspondingly long exposures an impression of movement of moving parts of the subject. Here, the flash should be fired until the second shutter curtain and thus just before the end of the exposure, in order to fix the frozen by the flash part of the movement in the direction of movement.

Different colors of light can be used by their color contrast as a design element. As an example, the recording was in a winter hut, in which the interior is bathed in warm light and the outside world before the window appears blue - cold, led. The excessive lightening of the interior with a cold light might appear unnatural in correspondence of our viewing habits there.