elixxier – Photo Blog Light settings and lighting structures for studio and outdoor photography. Tips and tricks for set.a.light 3D – The photo studio and light simulation for photographers.
What’s the special thing about composing? Well, you’ll be able to create pictures that won’t occur like that in nature or wouldn’t be feasible otherwise. You can step up the game by unleashing all of your creativity on your work and express yourself just as you like – there are no limits.
If you want to create a composing and i.e. insert a person into an exisiting picture, we’ll have to answer this question: How do I know about the right lighting, which I have to use for the model in my studio?
The lighting guidance should or better HAS TO fit the lighting of the background you want to insert the person in. Otherwise, this wouldN#t be a credible composing and the model would look “pasted in”, so to speak.
Another important point is to analyze the basic picture and think about how the light should fall onto your model.
There’s so much more about it than just the lighting, but it’s a very important point. Also, make sure to consider your choice of perspective, zoom/objective, …
You could see the basic structure of the work with a composing in this example.
Final result (Background + model shot in studio)
Let’s see how you’ll be able to create great composings with the help of set.a.light 3D. We’re planning the lighting and use the software to prepare everything for the final steps.
- Mit Klick auf das Video, wird eine Verbindung zu Youtube aufgebaut, es gelten damit die Datenschutzbestimmungen von Youtube. -
Workflow and realization:
Whilst you’re in set.a.light 3D, place the picture wall into the studio and load the background onto it. It gives you some options to adjust it – you could for example bend it, scale it or take it out of the lighting simulation. There’s a video for that HERE.
After successfully placing the model, you should care about the lighting. That’s the most important task in all of your worklow!! And it’s a very effective “training program”, since you’ll practice to read an image and notice details of the lighting by doing that.
View into the studio with the background image
Now start to build up your lighting and all of the equipment needed. Test out, how the light setup has to be designed in order to work together with your background.
Lighting setup is built up
View from the backside of the studio (from the picture wall)
If you’re done with that, take the opicture wall out of the simulation. This recreates the pure studio simulation and your light won’t fall onto the picture wall. Now you might want to expand your setup with a light that lets you crop out the model easily afterwards – you’ll have to do that, because you want to insert it later into the real background image. Now, start your shooting and have fun with creating your composing!
- Mit Klick auf das Video, wird eine Verbindung zu Youtube aufgebaut, es gelten damit die Datenschutzbestimmungen von Youtube. -
David Freigner did very well in solving this task – you can see that in the first part of the video. The lighting setup, the studio image and the result have been realized exactly as planned. The second part shows, how to use set.a.light 3D to create these composings and plan your lighting and shootings with it.
Thanks a lot to David Freigner for letting us have an isider view into his work and the lighting setup!
We wish you lots of fun and success!
File for set.a.light 3D used in the video: Dämmerung.set
set.a.light 3D is available HERE for free (trial).
Cropping people out with great results?
There’s a very good article (in German) about that at RAWexchange:
https://www.rawexchange.de/masken-kanaele-und-freistellen-in-photoshop/
This post is also available in: German