Lighting
Light Metering * Natural Light * Flash * Fill Lights * Fill Flash * Bounce Flash * Other Flash Options * Common Lighting Pitfalls
This is one of the big issues, one of the points that separates those who take good pictures from those who don't. "Photography," in its Greek roots, literally means, "drawing with light," and it's an accurate description. Everything hinges on how the light reflects from its source, off the subject, and into your camera's lens.
Pretty much every camera these days (except the really cheap ones you don't want, or the really expensive ones you won't use) comes with a built-in light meter. This reads the amount of light coming in and either recommends an exposure level (by f-stop and shutter speed) or sets one (in automatic modes). It's a good system, but it's not foolproof, so it's important to know how it works.
There are three basic types of metering in most cameras: Averaging, center-weighted, and spot metering. Averaging metering calculates exposure based on the average brightness of the whole frame. Center-weighted metering looks at the whole frame, but gives more importance to the center, because they're guessing that's where your main subject is. And spot metering takes its reading from a small spot, usually dead center, and ignores the rest.
If you can only use one, center-weighted is the reasonable compromise -- your exposures might not be great, but they'll rarely be really bad. A lot of more advanced photographers prefer spot metering, because it lets them take readings from just the point(s) they consider important, and base a decision on that.
More sophisticated cameras often have another metering mode, usually called something like "Matrix." This means the camera looks at distribution of light in the frame, and compares it with some profiles built into its memory, in order to try to guess what will work best. Matrix metering is less likely to be fooled by something like backlighting, so it's not a bad choice if you have it. Personally, I prefer to stick with spot metering.
The best balanced light, the easiest to get, and often the easiest to use, comes from the sun. Indirect sunlight is available to everyone, both outdoors and often indoors. Note the use of the word "indirect." Direct sunlight will certainly illuminate things, but it casts hard shadows that can increase contrast more than you want, that can fool your light meter, or -- worst of all -- make your subject look bad.
If you are shooting outdoors, try to find a bright shady area, like you might find on the North side (assuming you're above the Equator) of an off-white building. Of course, you don't want to choose a location based solely on that, because there are ways (discussed below) of dealing with shadows.
If you're indoors, try to find an area with a large, North-facing window, preferably with a high ceiling (as discussed in the "Studio" section of the "SETTINGS" page). On a nice day, the light in such a room will approach the ideal photographic light -- a soft, almost directionless ambient light that illuminates evenly without harsh shadows.
If you can't find really nice natural light, you need to fall back on artificial light. Your first impulse might be to use the flash unit built into your camera. Don't leap into it yet -- first, you might want to read the "Studio Settings" section of the SETTINGS page, which discusses various indoor lighting setups.
Most modern cameras, both 35mm and digital, have some form of flash mounted on the camera. This is a temptingly convenient way to add light in a situation where the light might be marginal.
For costume photography, though, I'd generally advise against it. Why? Because it visually flattens the subject. When you see a three-dimensional object, especially one with textured surfaces, your eye derives a great deal of information about its shape and surfaces from the variations in light and shadow. Overhead lighting casts small shadows from surface features, and our brains have learned to read those shadows and interpret them correctly.
But when the light comes from almost the same point as our viewpoint, as you have with a camera-mounted flash, there's precious little shadow to be seen. The closer the light source is to the lens, the more it "flattens" the subject, producing an adequate snapshot but a really poor costume photo. On top of it all, the flash near the lens tends to reflect blood back from the eyes of the person being photographed, resulting in the dreaded "redeye" that makes you want to call an exorcist.
Redeye can be cured with a bit of manipulation in a photo editing program, but the flattened lighting effect can't. The best use for the flash is much subtler, and we'll go into that very shortly below.
Imagine this: You're photographing someone in a rich brocade costume, and the only way for this brocade to show its texture seems to be out in full sunlight. So you put her in the sunlight, and the costume looks great. But then the hard shadows from the sun are pooling under her chin and eyes, giving her that zombie look: Renaissance Faire of the Living Dead. That's not what you want, either.
How do you make both her and the costume look good? Time to call on your trusty assistant with the white board. You direct your assistant to hold the white board in such a way that the sun's light is reflected into the pools of shadow, filling them with diffused (and not so blinding) sunlight. Photographers call this a "fill light," because it fills the shadowed areas. This softens the light, eliminating the hard contrast; but the subject is still illuminated well enough that the background won't trick your metering into overexposure. Better yet, it tends to produce a very flattering effect -- have the assistant move around with the white board, trying various angles to see what looks best. (Hint: never reflect the light upward from below the subject's eye-level, or the zombie look will be replaced by the Dr. Frankenstein look. We expect to see some shadow under the eyebrows; filling that with too much light looks unnatural.) (Note: Do NOT decide a mirror would be better, or cover the white board with aluminum foil to increase the reflected light. Either of these will create the effect of a second sunlight source, softening the shadows somewhat but guaranteeing a squint on the part of your subject. Remember that the fill light is a softer, diffused light, not to compete with the primary light source.)
So, if you don't have a handy assistant with a whiteboard, what can you do? If your camera has that aforementioned built-in flash, you can do the next best thing. Many of the sophisticated cameras made today are even ready to do this: the flash can be set for use as a "fill flash," performing the fill function even in sunlight. Sure, the flash is bright, but I guarantee it's not brighter than the sunlight -- fill flash produces a really pleasant effect, and can turn a terrible picture situation into a really nice picture. If your camera doesn't have a "fill flash" setting, just try it on a low-power setting -- it'll probably work.
If you have a camera with a hot shoe, and the flash on the hot shoe offers the option of pivoting upward or swiveling sideways, you can try a more sophisticated option: bounce flash. There are brackets available to mount a small white board at an angle above the flash head. Aim the flash directly upward, with the white board at a 45 degree angle -- now the light from the flash is diffused, or softened. In addition, the light source is now effectively a foot or more above the camera lens, enough to avoid flattening the subject. Voila!
Indoors, you can bounce light off a light-colored ceiling, if it's not too far, by aiming the flash upward, usually at about a 60-degree angle. The effect is that of a diffused light coming down from the ceiling. You have to be careful about those shadows again, but they'll be softened, because the light is diffused considerably. Alternately, if your flash can swivel from side to side, you can angle it off a nearby wall -- but remember that the light will take on the color of the wall. This kind of bounce flash must be used with care.
Finally, many cameras with hot shoes, and a few that don't have them, have what's called a "PC cord socket." This is used for connecting a cord to a flash mounted somewhere off the camera. The cord carries a signal that tells the flash when to fire.
Another option along similar lines is a "slave trigger," a sort of free-standing hot shoe with a light sensor on it. This device is attached to a "slave flash," a flash unit not connected to the camera. When another flash is fired, the light sensor on the slave trigger detects it and fires the slave flash, usually within 1/1000 of a second or so. The slave trigger, and most other off-camera flash devices, are usually used in a studio setup, but that doesn't mean you can't use them.
There are a myriad of mistakes you can make with light. Here are some of the common ones:
1) Too little light. This will cost you either depth of field, or shutter speed, or often both. If your shutter speed gets too slow, movement from either the subject or, more likely, the photographer, will ruin the picture. Solution: Put the camera on a tripod, and, if you need to, put the costume on a dress form. OR get more light.
NOTE: Even with a tripod, it's easy to jiggle the camera when the exposure button is pressed. To avoid this, if you have the time, use the camera's self-timer. This fires the camera a few seconds after the button is pushed, giving plenty of time for vibrations to die.
2) "Let's get some light on your face -- face the sun..." Yes, now the face is nicely illuminated -- we can see clearly how she's squinting and bunching up her facial muscles from the sunlight. Remember, NOBODY faces directly into the sun without squinting, and squinting doesn't look good unless you're Clint Eastwood. Solution: DON'T ever face your subject into the sun. Instead, have your assistant use the white board to reflect light where you want it. (Remember, photo flashes don't generally produce the squint because it's too fast -- unless the subject squints in anticipation of the flash. Then you'll want to try again.)
3) "It's a sunny day; there's plenty of light outside." Yes, there is, and I'll be the first to tell you natural light is best. Just remember that indirect natural light is best. Putting your subject in hard, bright sunlight produces hard shadows and too much contrast -- details get lost in the shadows, highlights get washed out, and the person's eyes look like pits. Solution: Photograph them in bright shade, but be very careful -- dappled shadows under a tree can be pleasant while you're there, but they make photos totally unusable. (Note: Sometimes direct sunlight is the only way to show something, especially details on a dark subject, such as a black-on-black brocade Margo used for one costume. Other times direct sunlight will take a fabric that looked fine in the store and give it a really synthetic sheen. It's a good idea to take a swatch of synthetic fabric out into the sunlight before you buy it. Better yet, just don't buy synthetics -- the costume will be more comfortable, too.) Alternatively, use some form of fill light to take care of the shadows.
4) Strong backlighting. If your subject has her back to the sun, or even to a light-colored surface in the sun, a center-weighted or averaging meter might set the exposure to show that bright background nicely. The subject then looks like a dark silhouette with some details -- visible, but not a good picture. Solution: This is where spot metering or matrix metering can really help you. If that's not available, zoom your lens in on the subject until she fills most of the frame. With an automatic camera, press the shutter button halfway to lock the metering and focus -- then zoom out and snap your picture. If you can't do that, put the camera in Manual Exposure mode (if you have it), approach the subject until she fills the frame, and set your recommended exposure. Back off until your frame shows what you want, refocus, and shoot based on the closeup metering settings. (If you think about it, you'll notice that both those last solutions are ways of manually "faking it" to get the effect of spot metering.)
Note that with a digital camera you have an opportunity to check your results immediately and correct it. With a film camera, you can do what the pros call "bracketing:" Shoot one shot at the exposure you think it needs, and then one a half-stop or full f-stop above, and one below. This way, one picture will probably be good -- but two will be wasted. (Yes, you waste two frames. But it's no good to save film if you don't get a good picture!)
5) Dark background. This is the reverse of the backlighting problem mentioned above. A light-colored subject against a dark background can easily be overexposed by meters compensating for the background. The solution is the same: take a meter reading from your subject, whatever way you have to.
6) Colored reflections. Don't place a person in a white outfit next to a brightly lit light green wall, unless you want the clothing to look green on one side. Light coming from the sun contains the full spectrum, but when it hits a colored surface, it reflects light of only that color. The resulting reflected light is tinted, and will pass on its tint to any neutral surface it hits. Again, this can also be a problem with bounce flash -- and with a film camera, you might not realize the problem until you get the prints. Solution: Beware of light-colored reflective surfaces, unless they're white or a neutral gray.
7) Incandescent light indoors. Ever notice how indoor photos usually look yellowish? It's those incandescent light bulbs we use -- instead of full-spectrum light, they put out a lot more yellow. Fluorescent lights are whiter, but they're heavy in the blue end of the spectrum. Solutions: A) You can get special filters (colored glass) that screw onto the lens to adjust the color balance for incandescent or fluorescent light. B1) With film cameras, you can buy specially color-balanced film for special light if you know you'll be using it -- or instruct the photolab to adjust it (some do, but don't expect it from your local drugstore's photo department). B2) With digital cameras, some allow you to reset the color balance to compensate. C) Use the camera's flash -- it puts out good white light (see "Using Flash" above.). D) When you have the picture in digital form, you can adjust colors with a program such as Adobe Photoshop or JASC Paint Shop Pro. (Add blue for incandescent, pink for fluorescent, until it looks right.) E) Drag everybody outside, where the light's better anyway.
8) Your shadow. How many times have you seen this? A nice picture, except that the photographer, with his back to the sun, has a nice shadow portrait stretching out along the ground. Yes, it can be a dramatic graphic element if you're composing an art photo that way. In photographing costumes (or most photography) it doesn't belong there. Especially if it touches the subject. Solution: If the sun's behind you, be aware of your shadow.