Lighting in a Cage

You should be wondering why the hell his this guy is talking about Position of the Light again when he already talked extensively on another post "Position of the Light étude"?

Well this one you will love it as a carry around weapon and as a mental reminder of - where should I put my light? Visualizing the the instant effect it will produce on the model would put you with mouth open. :), So let's play...

It's been a long time since I'm a member of the PhotoWorkshop.com and a lot of good stuff are coming up on their site just take a look around and if you like it join in.

Unfortunately not everyone got to subscribe it. They got a lot of videos and great composition techniques and also weekly assignments and the after review which I think is a great feature and very helpful.

Another thing that came into my attention, last year, was a diagram they have created to show you how light works from different positions and that I keep with me all these time for lighting reference called Light Cage.

You can simulate lighting a person from 45 degree in 3 different levels and with different light settings and also with a fill light if needed.

This year that have changed the Light Cage to a bigger version but I kept with me the flash videos of the older version and now it's time to share them with you all.

You can see the effects of each Light Cage just by moving the mouse around and then replicate it, or improve it, with the stuff you got. You do not need to have studio lights you can try the settings with your small strobes too. A la Strobist way!!

For the all set I created a special link to my personal site or you can simply click on each image to link to it. On the right side of the blog I created also a link to the page for later reference.

The first one I would like to share is a flash movie for the lens aperture.

This cool feature shows you how it works on different apertures just move the cursor over the f-stop and voilá.

The first light cage is the biggest and improved version over the other one's since now you have the possibility to make it with a fill in case you are working with it .

Makes the Light Cage very interesting to play around with since you can put the cursor over the positions and looking at the model to get an example of the light at that position.




This Light Cage shows you the effect of a normal hard light pointing at the subject.






With this one you cans see the effect of the light with a soft box making it softer.




And the last one shows you the light with the same softbox but this time if you press the mouse over the point source you will get a nice fill light to complement.


You do not need to have a naked model to make this ;) you can try them with any thing you like.

Also if you open them side by side you can see the difference between each one of them.

Until next time go play with your lights !!