First Time Lighting - Sort Of

Chris Durham · February 14, 2007

So I'm new to this and most of what I've done so far has been outdoors. I've got a light kit (Lowel DV Creator 55), but haven't really had a chance to use it. But last night my buddy and I were going to do some still shots for our website and I thought, "Why not break out the lights and get some practice?" So I did a 3-point setup with an umbrellaed 750W Tota for fill, a 500W Omni for key, and a 250W Pro for back. The pictures came out great and provided levels of depth I wasn't really used to getting so I'm in love with lighting now.

What I found kind of odd though was that they didn't provide as much light as I expected. The really brightened up the room and dialated my pupils like crazy; but shooting at ISO 100 F/4.0 I had to expose for 1/10 of a second. So I grabbed my light meter and set it up as if I was using my XL2 - 320 ASA and 24 FPS (Actually I'd probably use 48 FPS, but that didn't occur to me last night) and the readout was something like F/3.6.

Now depending on the lens I'm using and the zoom I'm at that F-Stop shouldn't be a problem, especially because I prefer to shoot wide open to minimize DoF; but I guess I just expected the light to be more intense than that - based on what my (untrained) eyes were telling me. So I guess my question is: Is this normal? In lighting a scene are you lighting it to this "low" level of light despite what the eye sees? Or is it just that a combined 1500W isn't a whole hell of a lot?

Chad Stockfleth · February 14, 2007

You hit the nail on the head: that isn't a lot of light. Our eyes compensate. Working with video so much, I'm constantly shooting at the bottom of the barrel, and to eye, it might seem quite dark, however on the screen, it all turns out well and nice.

An ASA 100 at F4 requires a generous amount of light.

John Holland · February 14, 2007

yep about 200/250 f.c.

Matt Sandstrom · February 14, 2007

really brightened up the room and dialated my pupils like crazy

hard light tends to look brighter than it is, especially if you look into the light, while the opposite is true for very soft light. 1500 watts of light is more than enough for a small subject even at a low asa but very little for an entire room.

/matt