Consistent Portraits

The trick to consistent portrait lighting is to set your lights (the main, fill, hair, and background) the same distance from your subject each time you set up your lights. This will ensure consistent light levels and exposure values.

Many photographers simply tie strings of established lengths from each light. The string then becomes the "ruler" for setting the light the proper distance from the subject.

Creating a Basic Portrait Set

In figure 1 we show the completed lighting solution for this lesson; each of the lights have been labeled as to what their purpose is in the lesson. We used a standard four light portrait set including a main/key, a fill, a hair, and a background light. In this Figure 1 we show a four light set-up.

The best way to establish your light to subject distances it to set your lighting solution where you want it with results you like. Then you can mark your lights with the strings one at a time.

Figure 2 shows the result of using the main light only, a Medium Starlite Kit. The high contrast and lack of shadow detail in the shot can be easily corrected with a fill reflector.

We set up a Photoflex LiteDisc Holder and attached a 32-inch white/silver LiteDisc to it with the white side toward the subject. It was set to camera left at about 45 degrees from the camera and 3 feet from the subject.

We made another exposure.

In our resulting shot (figure 5), we see the effect of the LiteDisc on the subject and the reduction of the overall contrast.

As an option to using a reflector as the fill, we decided to use a second Medium StarLite Kit to replace the LiteDisc reflector.

This light to subject distance of this light was about 1-1/2 to 2 feet more than the main light distance (figure 6). This ensures that the fill light is not as bright as the main, helping to achieve a better highlight to shadow ratio.

In our resulting shot (figure 8), we see the effect of the fill light on the subject. We reduced the contrast another notch and added an extra spark to the shot.

The next item for this classic portrait set up is to add the hair light.

Our hair light was a Photoflex Small HalfDome Boom Kit. Once assembled, we set the boom to camera right at 90 degrees from the camera. Then set the boom with the Small HalfDome attached directly over and just behind the subject and about 3 feet from the top of his head (figure 9).

To clearly illustrate the effects of the hair light, we shut down the key and the fill lights and made an exposure with just the hair light.

With the position set properly, the hair light just strikes the head and shoulders of the subject without illuminating the face (figure 10).

With the hair light in position, we powered up the key and fill lights and shot our next set of images. Figure 11 shows the previous result shot without the hair light and figure 12 shows the result shot with the hair light. Notice the nice separation between the hair and shoulders from the background.

To complete our lighting setup, we added a light to the background. We used a Photoflex Small Starlite Kit mounted on a Photoflex LS-2200 LiteStand. We configured the LS-2200 with the stud so that we could get the soft box down to its lowest possible level.

We placed the background light directly behind the subject and tipped it slightly up to light the seamless paper with the light to dark gradation (figures 13 and 14).

To illustrate the effects of the background light, we shut down all the other lights on the set and shot a photo with just the background light (figure 15).

Figures 16 and 17 show a comparison of our light setup without and with a background light. Notice how the background light provided even more separation between our subject and the background.

Once all of the lights are producing satisfactory results in our portraits, we can "record" the placement of each light. This is where the string is used.

Each light (or light stand) used can have a string tied to it (figure 18). The string is then pulled taut toward the subject and cut just in front of the subject's face.

The next time the lights are set up, each light can be set up in the same manner as the original set up by using these strings to keep the light-to-subject distances consistent.

Figures 19-22 show how each string is used to set the distance between each light and the subject.