The Basics of Lighting for Film

The basics of lighting for film.
For film (or photo) is nothing more than the work of shaping images through the contrast between light and shadow in nature.

The lighting of the photograph, both static and film, working with a single reference: the sun. Although the variants are endless, and the climate created with artificial light indoors have other references, directly or indirectly, the sun is the major source of light and where we base the aesthetics of all other sources.
Thus, drawn two main characteristics of sunlight:

1) When the sunlight strikes a subject directly. We say that light is a “hard”, ie, direct light.
2) When the sunlight strikes a subject indirectly. We say that a light is “soft” fuzzy.

The difference is noticeable when we are on a beach, for example. In the first case, the shadows cast are sharp and well delineated, including forming large contrasts between light and shadow. So when a cloud passes by the sun, the light is intense diffusion so that the shadows lose their sharp outlines (and may even disappear) and the contrasts are softened.

In such a situation, the first case the transition between shadow and light of a face is sharp, the contrast of light too hard in the second case, they form a penumbra region, ie, the transition from shadow to light is gradual and smooth, and it characterizes the diffuse light.

The more diffused light source and greater the distance between the source and the subject will be more diffuse light, the opposite is true.

If we see the same picture (portrait, ex.) with different variations of light, we can notice :

- Hard or direct light shows shadows and occasionally deliberate. Shows the characteristics of the model and offers the contrasts of light and shadow.
 - Diffuse light assures that no party to get the camera captured without illumination. Soften the shadows.