Single Source Lighting

[Nikita K Carpenter Jr]

Single Source Lighting is one of my favorite ways to light. It's so simple, yet effective. It doesn't have to be a hard fresnel either. I was on a shoot a few weeks ago where we had a huge homemade soft box that was around 1.2K and it looked epic!

 

Larger sources than that look fantastic too. We have a 6K bounced off of a 6x muslin and I couldn't believe how awesome it gave our set some ambience.

 

What do you think? Does it suit your need most of the time, or no (and it doesn't mean not being able to add eye lights or other small stuff)?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

It works in certain situations. Sometimes, there is nothing more powerful than a nice china ball; or a window with some window-light coming through, etc. Just depends on the situation. Some films/shots call for more elaborate lighting than others do.

Sometimes I find myself having to work very fast and in such cases single source becomes very important.

[Nikita K Carpenter Jr]

Most definitely. I'll give you an example of what I mean. I had to shoot a typical film noir last week. It was so cliche, but that's how the director wanted it. Once I went along with how she saw it, I fell in love with using one light though because that prompted the actors to work around how they use that lighting in the scene to fuel what they do on camera. It was fun to capture. There was a scene where I had one 600 on a Mafer high on a wall to light about seven or eight angles and it was golden provided I swung a barn door open or closed a little.

[Adrian Sierkowski]

One of my quickest location tricks is the corner-pocket light. Normally this happens when working on lo/no budget with lo/no time in ugly location with not enough power. It's a nice sized unit bounced up into the corner of a room and allowed to fall back "naturally," but with a little bit of definition. Take 5 minutes or less to set up. Not the most interesting thing, of course, but generally when I'm saddled with needing a light such as that, I'm making 1/5th of what I should be and wishing that I didn't like doing what I do so much; because then I'd be bright enough to pass on certain shoots.

 

I'm also a big big fan of a big soft source falling in from another room augmented by a practicle in the room or some other form of motivated light.