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Lighting for digital Dave Montizambert Faking It - part 3 of 1 2 3 4

by Dave Montizambert Published 01/06/2011

To get the edges of the leaf shadows just right, I experimented with the distance of the leaves from the white light source; moving the leaves away from the light which places them closer to the background creates smaller harder-edged shadows on the seamless paper; conversely moving the leaves closer to the light which places them further from the background creates larger softeredged shadows on the seamless paper. Technically speaking the leaves are an obstruction and the hardness of the resulting shadow edges is controlled by the obstruction distance to the background surface that the shadows are cast upon. I should also point out that you must ensure that the subject lights do not create any exposure on the white seamless background, if they do you will not be able to get a saturated blue sky and the difference in tone between the white clouds and the blue sky will become less. In other words, the white paper backdrop needs to read at least 4 stops below the camera setting; read with a reflective meter, before you add the two background lights, see Image 002.

Now, before you go charging off to try this background trick, all excited thinking about all the money you will save on backgrounds, you would be well advised to read on a little further. You see, there is more to making this work really well than just plopping down a bunch of leaves in front of the background light, you need to give equal consideration to the four following controls for Shadow Edge Transfer:

1. Distance of the light source
2. Distance of the obstruction
3. Distance of the background
4. Size of the light sourceAll four are relative to one another.

Depth of field:
Wider open apertures can sometimes cause a Depth of Field (DOF) problem when creating my fake sky background effect. With shallow DOF the background may be beyond the sharp zone and may be so far out of focus that the shadow shapes fuzz together becoming less distinct or may even disappear all together. If you choose to shoot with a shallow DOF, always view the background through the camera with the lens stopped down to the shooting aperture and with the DOF preview engaged. If the DOF is really throwing the background out of focus, then create harder-edged shadows to counter the extra unwanted background softness.

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1st Published 01/06/2011
last update 09/12/2022 14:54:07

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