How to use different light sources

Techniques

24 October 2007 09:30

Shooting still life at home can give your photography a whole new twist.  Anything from flowers and houseplants to ornaments and other bric-a-brac can be pressed into service .

Next, think about lighting. A separate flashgun from the one built into your camera makes a good starting point, but you don’t have to stop there – candles, torches or household lamps can all provide the basis for a home studio set up.

Using long exposures and moving the lamps around to illuminate specific areas of the subject means you can give your shots more impact.

However, light sources can vary in colour from the warm orange-red of normal tungsten light bulbs to the green of fluorescent strip lights and the cool blue of bright, overcast daylight. This is known as colour temperature. We don’t always notice this variation because our brains automatically compensate to give us ‘correct’ neutral colours.

The sensor in your digital camera isn’t as sophisticated as your brain, however. That’s why you may need to use the automatic white balance setting. This will help the camera record and process the various light colours into a neutral result. To override it, there’s a range of alternative manual settings.

Getting exposure right with a moving light source is tricky. Your camera’s meter won’t be able to read the light produced by a moving torch, so you’ll need to experiment to get the results right. Use fully manual exposure so you can set both the shutter speed and aperture yourself. If you’re using one fixed light source – such as the candle in our shots – along with a moving light, it can seem impossible to get the right exposure. When using a moving light source the exposure will largely be governed by the aperture, so experiment with different settings and use a shutter speed of 30 seconds to give yourself time to light areas with the torch. Exact settings will depend on the power of the torch you use, how far it is from the subject and how long you spend shining the light at one area of the subject. The exposure we found suited our set-up best (at ISO 100) was 30 seconds with an aperture of f/16.

At least when you’re shooting digitally, you can check the results as you go.