Read our comprehensive photography lighting guide for beginners, which explains very basic but valuable professional tips for lighting and recommendations for lighting gear.
What makes a good picture? well, photography, at its core, is about capturing proper light in your camera. The word “proper” is tricky here as it can affected by many factors, and the final result will greatly depend on the light, which will dictate the depth, clarity, and even emotion of the photo. In other words, no matter how expensive your camera body and lens are, bad light will result in dull and uninspiring images.
That is why the search trends of “photography lighting guide for beginners” are always on top of search engines, as many rookies are interested in mastering the skill of capturing proper light. Not to mention, you also have a composition (how all the elements are arranged for the picture) and exposure, which is the balance of light and darkness. Speaking of lighting, you need to focus on three things here:
1. Positioning
If you think about it, the position of the light source significantly impacts our vision in daily life and is the same with the camera, thus making positioning the most important topic in our photography lighting guide for beginners.
You can move a light source according to your desired shot, and other times, you have to move the subject instead of the light source. For example, in the case of the Sun, the object has to move, and in the case of a man-made light source like a candle or photography light, the light source can be moved.
When moving light, you can either go for front-facing, which will minimize shadows on the subject and is commonly used in beauty photography. Portraits usually use side lighting for depth and contrast, and if you are into more dramatic shots for silhouettes, then backlighting is for you. It creates dimension to small objects like jewelry and electronics & is great for product photography.
2. Soft and Hard Light:
If positioning is done right but the lumens coming out of your light source are not enough, the result won’t be what you might be expecting. Go with something that is at least 100W+ rated and comes with a high CRI or color rendering index for better color accuracy on the objects. Now you have a good source of light, position is also done right but how light or dark are those shadows behind the object?
This is where hard and soft lights come in, hard creates strong shadows and contrasts, and soft is the opposite of that. Soft lights are used when a subtle transition is needed between dark and soft areas of a picture. Hard will create much more “dramatic” transitions and sometimes get a bad reputation in portraits as it exposes all skin imperfections.
But the use case of both depends on different scenarios. In most cases, for a beginner, the soft light will be a great place to start as it will imitate the front lighting of light direction with subtle changes to work with. But distance will highly impact the result. Most professionals use large soft lights with dimmed intensity paired with hard side lights to cover the imperfections hard light tends to expose and create subtle, smoothed-out portraits.
3. Color Temperatures
Even if you happen to be a beginner, you must know that If your images look too cool or too warm, they give you an unnatural feel. In such situations, one has to adjust the white balance manually to match the light source; new camera bodies have an automatic white balance mode to deal with this, but a more professional way to adjust the light source before taking such pictures. This is where an adjustable light source like the SIRUI C150X 150W Handheld Pocket Light stands out.
Designed for both beginners and professionals, you get a portable package equipped with a 150-watt light source throwing more than 5300 lux of accurate light. You also get full control of color temperatures and even work with a softbox to get the soft portraits every beginner is looking to master. A worthy addition to your gear that can be used for vlogs and outdoor shooting.
Using such lights will give you accurate lighting and better control of color temperatures, but to tackle any remaining errors in pictures (which are prone to happen), most professionals use RAW files instead of JPEG for their pictures. This file format is specially designed to fix white balance errors during post-editing.
4. Lighting Types in Photography
Categorizing types of light sources is quite simple; the most common type of light source on our planet is the sun, which is in the form of natural light, i.e., sunlight & ambient light. Probably the most commonly used light source and is great for common photography niches, including portrait, landscape, and street shots.
Then there are continuous lighting setups, which are always on and come in different form factors. These include LED, HMI, tungsten, and fluorescent lights, all used for different use cases. Then you also have flash & strobe lighting, best for freezing motion in the studio, and event photography.
The most common ones used by both professionals and beginners are LED continuous lights, as they bring more efficiency, better color accuracy, and portability. Such setups are user-friendly and can be used in virtually all photography scenarios. One such setup ranked by us as the best continuous lighting for photography is the C150X combo, which is highly recommended for beginners (and professionals) working in the studio for commercial shooting or outdoors, even for run-and-gun shooting!
Before we conclude our photography lighting guide for beginners, it is worth mentioning that spending some time with light sources and their use case will greatly impact how you will start taking photos. For a beginner, we recommend spending a lot of time experimenting with soft and hard lights in both front and side lighting positions. The more you know light, the better your pictures will be.