What is a FILL LIGHT? - And how it's used in portrait photography

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In a portrait photography lighting setup, the fill light helps control contrast.

[TeddyCavachon]

The caveat regarding opposite-side fill placement is that it can result in a crossed-shadow pattern and result in low areas of a face such as the smile lines and corners not receiving fill or key lighting resulting in very dark unflattering shadows.

My first source of education about portrait lighting was from a Kodak book back in 1971 which suggested placing fill up over the camera lens because located there any shadows it creates mostly fall in places the camera will not see, avoiding the cross-shadow lighting problem. It also causes the fill source to fall off front-to-back relative to the camera which results in smoother shadow transitions.

A year later I was working as assistant to top wedding shooter Monte Zucker and discovered he used the same centered fill strategy for his dual flash reception photos, mounting the center of fill flash about 16” over the lens of the camera for the reasons mentioned above. He had learned the “neutral” (i.e. no shadows seen) fill technique from portrait shooter Joe Zeltzman who aimed who bounced a bank of fill lights backwards off the white back wall and side walls of his studio, which produces fill very similar to the natural light outdoors which is our perceptual baseline for normal.

A practical way to understand how fill contributes to digital exposure is to use a target (or patient subject) holding white and black terry towels with texture which can be seen in the camera playback. Start with just the centered fill light over the camera with the camera aperture set for the desired DOF (e.g. f/8 to keep the entire head in focus) then raise the power of the centered fill until detail is recorded in the black towel. You will note that the white towel is still underexposed and rendered as middle gray. Next turn on the key light and raise it’s power until the white towel is just below the point of clipping.

What you will do in that exercise is fit the range of the scene in front of the camera (at the distance of the target) to the range of your camera sensor. Anything you then put in that lighting will be reproduced similar to how it is perceived by eye with adaptive vision. From that learning baseline you can nuance the mood of the lighting by starting with more or less fill and by adding reflectors to bounce both key and fill light if wanting other than front-to-back fall off of the shadows.

[khaledabdulazim]

Thanks Ed! Incredibly helpful! Keep up the great work 👏 👍

[RS-Amsterdam]

Good video and explanation.
Always helpful.
Just dropped in to say hello Ed.
All well I hope ?
Keep up the good work.

[manoharmgr]

SUPER. SUPER , THE BEST VIDEOS
நன்றாக இருக்கிறது வாழ்த்துக்கள் R.MANOHAR- INDIA, * CHENNAI

[riccia]

This is confusing you still didnt explain f the fill light is part of the shadow family or the light family.