Shooting with Natural Light is both exciting and challenging experience. On hand, due to the fact that you cannot control the intensity of natural light, your camera will be constrained to higher ISO numbers, wider aperture and faster shutter speeds. To balance this triangle of exposure you would have to sacrifice one to another. On the other hand, having this immense, irresistible light source is a magic itself, and photographs you get from natural light are just breath taking.
In this episode with Mark Wallace from Adorama TV, we explore his way of shooting with a window light only.
ISO: 400. This parameter will give you some headroom for brighter exposure without introducing noise and undesired artifacts still.
Shutter Speed: 1/60 or 1/125. Faster shutter speed is ideal because when you shoot handheld, your shaking will definitely distort the focus. The faster shutter speed, the less shaking camera will capture. At the same time faster shutter speed will mean darker exposure – something we want to avoid.
Aperture: f 1/4. That is the widest aperture one can get with 50mm prime lens. First, it allows the most amount of light to be capture, making the photograph brighter. Second, it’s shallow depth of field is great for a creative effect. Mark Wallace loves to focus on eyes, with the rest of photograph falling into gradual blur. This technique is not uncommon among photographers.
This set of photographs is set inside the hotel room, with two big windows on one side of the room. The room itself is painted white, with white bed cover – the surrounding acts as a reflector in our case, which can create a fill light on the opposite side .
In this example we explore two positions.
First position: model looks towards the window. Camera will capture only one side of her face, but well-lit, soft-lit side.
Second position: model turns her face against the window. Now both sides of her face are lit – natural light from the window works as a key light on camera’s left. The room environment reflect the light back on the model on camera’s right, working as a fill light.
For THIRD position mark moves further back from the model himself. Since he shoots with 50mm wide aperture lens, the closer you move physically to the subject, the more focal distortion is introduced. To remedy that we can move back from the model, shoot wider frame, and then crop it in post. Just make sure your focus is dead on the eyes.
Watch the full episode with Mark Wallace and Adorama TV: