Quote:
Originally posted by monica
..... but when you said that moving the light back could still help a little, you were wrong. Moving the light back will greatly decrease the amount of light hitting the background due to the inverse square law.
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Actually, he was right!
As I explained in another thread........
"Lastly and the most complicated to explain is this. Imagine placing your light 5 feet from your model. You meter the light on your model and it says f16. Now you meter the light hitting the background and it says f4. Now your background is gonna be way too dark because there so much difference between the f-stop of the model and the f-stop of the background.
Now, just as Donovan P. said....move the light "back" to say 10 feet from the model. Meter the light again. What you'll find is that since the distance between the light source and the model has "increased", the f-stop difference between the model and background has "decreased". I know this is complicated, but it really does work. Now, your background should be lighter and more acceptable. Of course, the best idea is to purchase another light, but if this is just not something you can do, keeping in mind what we've just discussed should help out a lot."
Here's a diagram to explain my point. Notice that as the light source is moved farther away from the subject, the f-stop decreases beween the model and background, thus....lightening up the background by 2 stops. This is a crude illustration but it should prove the point
