Techniques : F stopping ur Rim Light

Great piece from strobist , bout rim lights , sorry for the low quality display pic , its much clearer over there , A MUST READ ARTICLE , this down here is just a part of it .....


Reader Till Hamburg asks the above question in the Strobist Flickr Pool, and posts a series of photos just to prove his point. First of all, a little explanation of what Till means by these numbers. Then, an explanation and how to make that angle-dependent strength thing work for you.

The series of photos at left have two lights which concern us. (Looks like there is a backgrond light going on there, too. But let's ignore that for the purposes of this discussion.)

In the top photo, the rim light is set one stop hotter than the light at camera right (which is illuminating the subject's face.) In the middle, they are equal. And in the bottom, the rim light is one stop lower than the main light.

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PLEASE NOTE: I think he has his f/stops reversed in the label on the bottom photo. As you can see, the main light is remaining constant, while the rim light drops a stop each frame, heading toward the bottom.
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This lighting quirk used to screw me up all of the time when I would shoot a rim-lit situation, until I figured out what was going on.

Why it happens, and a way to make this work for you, after the jump.


As you can see above, even one stop down is a little hot for a rim light. I tend to start out at two stops down. (If you work without a flash meter, as I do, use your guide number chart to get you close on the first pop.

Also, if a room is ambient-lit in a poor, muddy-ish, ASA-800 kinda way and you only have one light, consider using that light as a separation/rim light (instead of in front) to add depth to your scene. Because of the efficiency of the lighting angle, you can back that speedlight way back (adding depth and internal separation and slow fall-off to the whole scene) even though your speedlight is not very powerful.

The rest of the article at Strobist .