Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida 
, Apr 25, 2004; 11:26 p.m.
The lighting theme this week is a simple technique of combining a
large, diffused soft light with a small hard light and gaining the
benefits of both.
In previous lighting themes we've seen how a large diffused light
source creates soft, translucent specular highlights. The same large
diffused light also creates shadows which are softer, lighter and
have a more gradual edge transfer. The transisiton from dark to light
in the shadows is smoother and less abrupt under a large source
because the light rays are diffused and reach the subject from many
different angles.
On the other hand, a small hard light source creates very dark
shadows with sharply defined edges and hot, opaque specular
highlights. But a hard light is great for revealing rough texture.
Sometimes you want the soft highlights, open shadows and delicate
color and sometimes you want the rich texture detail, dark shadows
and the deep color saturation of a hard light.
Sometimes one is not enough. You've got to have both. By placing a
hard light in front of a large softbox or scrim, you can have the
qualities of hard and soft light. You'll have a combination of soft
and hard specular highlights. There will be two types of shadows,
tighter harder shadow transfer edges near any objects and softer,
more open shadow edges farther away from those objects.
These sample shots have an overhead perspective so the hard light and
the softbox were positioned above, slightly to the left and to the
rear of the set. This is a form of short lighting in that the shadows
are projected to the camera position.
This first shot shows the light from the softbox. The diffused
softbox light is 1.5 stops under-exposed to act as fill for the key
light.
Soft box for fill
Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida , Apr 25, 2004; 11:33 p.m.
The hard light, a 7 inch reflector, is positioned in front of the softbox and is about 2 stops brighter. If you look closely you can see the addition of some hard specular highlights on the shiny bits in the scene but notice the great texture in the rope, the hot specular hits on some of the tools and the bright highlights in the cloth.
There also is a second set of shadows overlapped on the shadows from the first softbox light. These new shadows are tighter and darker. There are really two shadow edges, one from each light.
Hard light in front of the softbox
Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida , Apr 25, 2004; 11:39 p.m.
A fill card on the right to lighten the shadows a bit.
Fill card lightens shadows
Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida , Apr 25, 2004; 11:46 p.m.
The brightness of the highlight of the rope in the upper left was distracting. Just out of the frame is a black card or "gobo" (because it goes between an object and a light source) This gobo blocks some of the light from hitting the left edges of the rope, lowering their value.
Black gobo darkens rope
Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida , Apr 25, 2004; 11:57 p.m.
Here's a shot of the setup. You can see the medium softbox overhead and the 7 inch hard light on the left. The soft box was on a ceiling grid but for this shot it easily could have been on a light stand. You wouldn't even need a boom.
In the upper left of the set is the black card gobo darkening the rope and on the right is a white flex-fill.
800ws in the softbox and 300ws in the hard light, exposure was f22 at 100 ISO, digital capture on a ProBack, Mamiya RZ and a 250mm lens.
All you need is a small light and a large light. It could be a softbox or a scrim, strobes or hot lights. Give this a try. Experiment with the distance from your lights to the subject and the power to each light.
Setup
Garry Edwards , Apr 26, 2004; 03:48 a.m.
This one is even simpler. I hate using the word 'standard' in lighting because I feel that there should be no such thing as standard lighting setups, but yes, I did use the softbox in the 'standard' position of above and a bit behind.
The other light, distant and right, was a standard reflector fitted with a honeycomb grid, designed to add a bit of drama and to cast long shadows. I also used a low camera viewpoint.
The reason for the low camera and the long shadows is that this is a 'free gift' bundled with a related product, and the items are extremely small.
Kodak 14N, F50, f16 to get max DOF
Free gift
Wayne Melia 
, Apr 26, 2004; 12:44 p.m.
Thanks for providing these series of tutorials. Very well presented and a great reference. Much appreciated.
Jerry Johanson , Apr 26, 2004; 05:16 p.m.
I thought this week's theme was placing a hard light in front of a soft light. Garry?
Brooks, how is this different than placing the large, soft fill light behind the camera?
Thanks.
Garry Edwards , Apr 26, 2004; 05:22 p.m.
Jerry, Maybe you're right, and if it is then my apologies to Brooks. I thought it was about using both a hard and a soft light in the same shot.
Brooks Short - Tampa, Florida , Apr 26, 2004; 06:29 p.m.
Jerry,
You're correct. This exercise is about placing a hard light directly in front of a soft light. The effect is that the scene is lit from one direction and appears to be lit with one light source.
By combining the hard light with the soft light at the same location, the shadow transfer edges and specular highlights have qualities of hard and soft light. But the light is very directional as if from one source and location.
Very seldom are any lights in front or directly behing the camera in most still life setups. Usually the main light is above and slightly behind or to the side of the subkect. These positions create a short lighting effect which reveals and defines form better than frontal lighting.
It's like the difference between an outdoor scene early or late in the day, looking towards the sun, when the sun is just above overlapping ranges of mountains (you'll have to excuse me. I'm leaving this Wednesday for a week long motorcycle trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway ). The short lighting accentuates every ridge line of the mountains and every shape in the still life.
Filling in those shadows with a light from the front of the set would flatten the shadows and take the depth out of the shot. Fill cards around the front or sides of the set are okay because a white, not mylar or foil, fill card will light an area without creating an additional set of shadows.
No apologies needed, Garry. A soft light overhead for fill and a hard light from another location is an interesting technique also.
