In this week’s practical class, we set up a dark set to test out different lighting’s effects on the subject’s face and learned how to achieve those effects. Sylvia and I were assigned to be on the camera. Our main task was to adjust the f stop every time for the camera to adapt to the lighting so it would not look over or under exposed.
The original set up was 1000 K Arri with fresnel lens from the right of the frame and a black negative fill board placed at the back of the subject. The lighting was hard and edges looked clear. The f stop was set at the middle of f/11 and f/16. With Cutter applied, the aperture increased to f/11. With a cucoloris or a “cookie” applied to the front, the amount of lighting has been reduced so the aperture was adjusted to f/8 to let more light in. With half a piece of rough spun applied to the front of the light, the lighting became diffused, looking soft and the edges on the face looked blended and blurry than before. The f stop was adjusted to f/5.6, allowing more light to come in so it wouldn’t look under exposed. Then we used a full piece of rough spun. It can be noticed that the overall ambience light has been increased and the fill light has also been enhanced due to the greatly diffused lighting reflecting from the wall. When Lee filter 416 (a 3/4 white diffusion paper) was applied, a strong to medium diffusion used for soft lighting effect then a Lee 216 (full white diffusion) applied. Comparing the two effects, the lighting is slightly more softer when the latter was used.
The most interesting technique I learned was that you can put pegs around the ban door of the light to get a dappled lighting like the light goes through a tree. And the session has helped greatly with my knowledge on aperture and the corresponding intensity of lighting to each f stop.