The ONE Lighting Tip You Need to Know | Reflected Light, Explained

[Reupload]

When it comes to lighting, one of the most important tips a new cinematographer can learn has nothing to do with lighting fixtures at all, but rather the objects that are bounced off from the light those fixtures emit. Reflected light is the light that surrounds us everywhere - it's the light that bounces off of everything... literally everything. Trees, furniture, grass, the ground. In today's episode of Ask Aputure, Ted from the A-Team walks us through this incredible important lighting tip and how to use this knowledge in your career as a cinematographer.

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[photojournalists]

If you want to show rain or the myst from the breath, you need to be lighting it 90-180 (backlit) to your camera. Many people know this, but surprisingly William Friedkin (the French Connection, etc.) didn't know that. In his book, The Friedkin Connection, he talked about how they tried to shoot a scene and didn't realize they had to backlit it. 

If you want to show light in your shot. Like rays or a sense of light direction, you need to use the same principle basically, but you need to use a hazer, fogger, etc. or something to put fine particles of water or oil. To essentially help you trace the light in your shot. This is great to either create a mood, show sunset lights coming from a window indoor.

[busta-bustornahhh]

Literally the best spokesperson for a company ever! I loved the aputure brand because of you. Your charismatic character at nab caught my interest and ur knowledge on youtube keeps it. Amazing work, and I hope the best for you :)

[TheBiggervern]

A great reminder that reflected light is everywhere and mattters. Thank you.

[loganryan]

I found a cool trick relating to lighting on a low budget shoot. The only lights we had were a 500W light and a China Ball. Through careful maneuvering and placement, we used the China Ball to fill all the shots and the 500 as our key. For backlighting, either the China Ball was placed at an angle or the 500 was aimed slightly off axis to the talent and was placed above or below and we bounced it back up or down to be the backlight. Despite never having three lights, it worked out pretty well.

[williamulloa]

One lighting technique that I would recommend is WEDGE LIGHTING. It's usually used in product shots and it's basically done by aiming the light to a reflective source then adding a silk to diffuse the light. All this done on a 60-75 degree angle of the subject. And you can also add a reflector on the other side of the subject to bring up those shadows. And finally a back light to give it that shinny commercial look to the product. ¡Hope it helps someone!

[windcapture]

This is a lighting tip that is very basic but something most people fail to do. I myself am finally realizing the importance of this. Here's the tip: Do not overexpose. It's a lot easier to fix underexposed data than to try and recover something overexposed.

[ordersteve]

Don't be scared to use light! I shoot film photography and for a while my excuse was, "i love natural light". So if I have a light (and more importantly know how to use it), I have the freedom to diagnose if I will need it or not!

[anime]

Water on the ground can be a good source of bounce light for low light scene.

[popcorndreamsmedia]

A couple of times on a shoot I have got one of my crew to put on a white, grey or black tshirt and stand in front of the talent so increase bounce or add fill. It really works a treat.

[ENVYsionFilms]

The best tip I can think of is DO...  Play around with different lighting setups and equipment.  The more you try, the more you learn, the easier it is to "craft your creative vision."  Thanks for the video A-Team always good content.

[roehaus]

This is an extremely important subject for low budget shooters that are usually shooting in SMALL rooms with WHITE WALLS... it would be great if you could do a video on how to shape light sources in order to reduce the effect of reflected light from these walls.

[absolutely-brendan]

I think the most practical lighting tip is to work towards emulating natural lighting. A lot of beginning filmmakers love natural light because it looks good with comparatively little work. If you understand why it looks good, it's much easier to copy it with artificial lighting.

[alexsound]

The Parallel with sound bouncing creating echo/reverb is so huge. And as light, it will bounce differently according to wave lenght (frequencies) on the damping properties of the surface. Density and size will affect the frequencies that are absorbed and when we think about it, colors are just a result of certain part of the spectrum being absorbed while others are not.

[Julianyofficial]

perfect explanation. Never really understood that. Thanks!

[danielsuarez]

I think the best tip for lighting, if the scene is in a small room or something u can always use the walls for reflect ur light and something more natural or meaby interisthing reflections .

[CameraStudio]

I thing the practical Lightning (The light which you can see in the Background) is the most important Light, because it makes your Background and your Shot so interesting. You can change tge ambient completely.

[JoseMendozaENT]

When recreated the green hue from fluorescent lights, adjust the color temperature to magenta instead of adding green gels to each light.

[NoahTom]

This is my favorite tip to everybody who is going to a shoot, what you wear effects the lighting of the shoot. Wear blacks or neutral colors to the set, we're not all wearing black because we are cooler than everyone else, we don't want to show up in reflections or become a walking bounce card.

[rspictures]

My tip: Don't have gels or multicolored LEDs? Like what the video explained, a bright enough light bouncing off a colored surface will bounce a subtle, soft, colored light on the subject. Yes, we usually want to avoid as much splash light as possible from colors we don't want, but using this trick the right way can be yet another different way of lighting to add to the arsenal. I've used this on many occasions to add just a hint of difference in my composition. Try it out! You would be surprised with the possibilities!

[ScribblebytesWorldwide]

Nice dolly zoom hidden in there and shout out to Lars von Trier 👌👌👌