Category Archives: Lighting

Origins of the term “High Key” in video lighting.

You’ve probably heard the term High Key as well as Low Key a million times in the world of photography, video and film. But where exactly does the term come from and what exactly does it mean?

I had to ask myself this today when during a discussion about a future shoot it was stated that we would shoot some low key scenes. But I wasn’t really 100% certain in my own mind what that meant. Does it mean dark? Does it mean a low key light level (relative to the background), or is it the positioning of the key light?

Look, this isn’t a term that’s new to me, I’ve come across it many times, but I’ve never particularly liked the term because it always seems to mean slightly different things to different people, so you can never be sure what they really mean.

First of all what is a “key light”? Generally the key light is the main source or most important source of light in a scene. I don’t know the origins of the term or how long it’s been in common use, but it seems to be a relatively new term specific to photography and video.

When I googled “High Key Lighting” I got an equally confusing description of what it is. On Wikipedia for example, high key is described as “High-key lighting is usually quite homogeneous and free from dark shadows”. OK, so that would mean low Key to have dark shadows and not be homogeneous – ie. high contrast. And this doesn’t really seem to match what a lot of people consider low key to be. Elsewhere I came across all sorts of frankly bizarre definitions of high key such as….
High-key lighting creates a clean focus on the center of attention and then in another article it stated that it means that when you use a high-key setup, the key light is stronger than the fill lights. but then went on to say So usually, the shot has very little to no shadows present. Hmmm… how can you have a key light stronger than the fill and then also not have shadows?

Well, at least I know I am not the only one not entirely sure what these terms that get thrown around all over the place truly mean. Let’s face it if I said I was going to make my shots “contrasty” or with “deep shadows” or perhaps “flat” I am sure everyone would be on the same page.  But “Low Key” what does it mean? Is it just dark? Is it contrasty? Is it flat? 

Salome_with_the_Head_of_John_the_Baptist-Caravaggio_1610-588x500 Origins of the term "High Key" in video lighting.The above image is of the painting Salome with the Head of John the Baptist by Caravaggio(1610).

Clearly the main light, what we would normally call the key light is the brightest source of light and it must be relatively bright.  Let’s imagine for a moment that the ratio between the Key light and rest of the scene is 8:1. This ratio is often quoted as the minimum for low key and suggests a bright key relative to the background. As light and contrast is relative you could actually achieve a similar look in a bright room – provided the key is 8 times brighter than everything else and then you stop down or add ND to the camera to bring your exposure down to a reasonable level. The high contrast ratio will ensure the background would be very dark compared to the foreground. But one thing remains, the key light is bright, not dim. It is high, not low compared to the rest of the scene. So where does the term low key come from?

The term Low key has been used in music for a very long time to mean a quiet or deep tone, but I don’t think the image above could be called “quiet” and low key lighting doesn’t always mean very dark, it normally means high contrast and often includes very bright highlights.

I’d like to offer up an idea of where the term actually comes from when applied to photography and video: TV soap and episodic multi-camera lighting. Perhaps when we use the term high key today it is a discombobulation of different concepts and terms and that is why there is often confusion. 

Traditionally daytime episodic TV has always been shot quickly using multiple cameras. To make this possible the lights are normally up above the set suspended from the ceiling on some form of grid or truss system. This ensures that the lights are not seen by any camera whichever angle they are shooting from. In addition the lighting will generally not cast deep shadows so that you can shoot from multiple angles without issue.

High Key isn’t about how bright the scene is, you could be shooting a night scene. But the lights are up high, above the set and the lighting will be free of strong shadows. So High key isn’t about brightness, it’s about contrast and also the key light position, up High so you don’t end up with cameras shooting directly towards the light.

The the opposite of high key will be low key where perhaps the key light is creating a lot more contrast, where the key is brighter than the fill and not only brighter, but perhaps more commonly at a lower height so that the low key light casts shadows across the scene to create a sense of depth rather than just on the floor. Arguably this doesn’t mean the scene will be dark, just that there will be contrast between the key light and the rest of the shot.

So, in summary:
High Key = Uniform lighting of both foreground and background with minimal shadows. But could be either overall bright or overall dark, often with the key light(s), of which there may be many, placed high above the scene/set so you can shoot the scene from any angle.

Low Key: A relatively bright key light so that there is contrast between the key lighting and the rest of the scene/shot. Overall the scene may be bright or dark, but it will have high contrast and shadow areas. Possibly the key light will be at a lower level so the low level key light  will cast shadows across faces and objects to provide depth and modelling.

So many descriptions of High Key and Low Key simply refer to the overall brightness of the scene, this is not correct. A High Key scene can be dim and a low key scene MUST contain areas of great brightness in order to have the contrast associated with low key. All too often stating that the term High Key comes from the use of a bright key light over simplifies the situation to the point where it is no longer clear what is meant because to create nice looking Low Key you will will often need a bright key light.

Please discuss in the comments.

 

Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight

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 The Nanlite Forza 300 is a LED COB spotlight normally used with a reflector to provide a 55 degree light cone.

Forza-2_2.3.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight
Nanlite Forza 300 spotlight with included reflector.

 

The lamp is 300 watts and can be powered from the mains with the included power adapter or vai a pair of V-lock batteries. It is daylight balanced at 5500K and has a CRI of 95 (measured by myself). It has always resulted in very pleasing skin tone whenever I have used it.

Forza-skin_1.12.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight
Skin tones look good when using the Forza 300 from Nanlite.

 

The 300 watt LED COB emitter produces a similar amount of light to a 3000 watt tungsten lamp. This  makes the Forza 300 suitable for illuminating very large areas or as a source light for a large soft box or for use with large silk diffusers. Nanlite make a very nice parabolic reflectors/soft boxes for the Forza lamps that are very quick to erect due to the use of clever quick locking support arms.

Parabolic-reflector_5.1.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight
Parabolic reflector/soft box for the Nanlite Forza 300

 

The lamphead has a standard Bowens mount so there are many light modifiers that can be used, but one that I particularly like is the Nanlite zoomable Fresnel adapter. This large fresnel lens can be adjusted to provide a very tightly controlled light beam from just 5 degrees wide to 45 degrees wide. It comes with barn doors and turns the Forza 300 into something comparable to the old Arri 2K fresnel, just without the heat and power draw.

Fresnelbarn-doors_3.1.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight
Nanlite zoomable fresnel lens with barn doors for the Forza 300 and Forza 500.

 

I’m a big fan of fresnels as they give you good control of where your light is going. Make it dimmable as well and you have a very versatile lamp.

The light can be controlled via DMX as well as a couple of very cheap wireless remote control units (around £20/$30) and an app is due to be released soon. 

Like many modern lights it also has a number of effects modes including strobe, storm, TV and bad bulb and these can be quickly and easily selected from the lamps control unit and power supply. The build quality is very good. The lamp head is mostly metal while the control unit is a mix of good quality plastics and metal.  The whole thing weighs 4.8kg so you don’t need a particularly large light stand to support it.

with a street price of around £650/$850 this is a very affordable yet also very capable lamp. I would suggest that anyone trying to build their own versatile light kit should include at least one spot light and not just rely on LED panel lights. Having a good, bright spot light allows you to a lot more creative lighting as a spot light, especially if you add the Fresnel lens can be used with gobo’s or objects in the foreground to create interesting shadow effects.

Grab3_3.16.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight

For a recent short film shoot I used the Forza 300 to throw light through a forest of trees. The trees creating interesting shadows adding a lot of extra contrast to the shots.  For another scene I used the Forza 300 as a backlight through some smoke for an interesting mystic effect. A flat panel light cannot reproduce these effects in the same way.

grab1_3.3.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight

For this shoot I needed to power the lamp off batteries. It is worth noting that if running the lamp at is maximum output of 300 watts you will be drawing over 10 amps from each of the 2 V-Lock batteries need to run it. This is right at the limit of what many V-Locks can deliver.  As a result you may find your batteries cutting off before they are fully discharged. To run a high power LED lamp like this you should consider Lithium Manganese batteries or other batteries capable of at least a 12 amp output. My own preference is to use Pag Paglink batteries as by linking two batteries together you can double the amount of power they can deliver. Using 4 Paglink batteries (2 pairs of 2) I was able to run the lamp for 90  minutes at full power.

4xpags_3.13.1-600x338 Nanlite Forza 300 LED Spotlight
4 Paglink batteries will power the Forza 300 for around 90 minutes.



The lamp I used for the review was supplied by Prolight Direct UK. They are very knowledgable with many years of experience with all kinds of film and television lighting, so do contact them with your lighting needs.

I highly recommend the Forza 300. It is, in my opinion, one of the best of this type of lamp on the market today and very competitively priced. Please see the video above for more information.

Nanlite.com

Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway – Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.

I have just return from one of the most challenging shoots I have been involved in. The shoot took place over 5 days in and around Tromso in Norway. The aim was to gather footage to show off the capabilities of a new type of 4K TV from Phillips.

We shot the Northern Lights, we shot dog sledding , snow mobiles, shots of the city and sailing on the fjords. Each part of the shoot had many challenges and a lot of the shoot took place at night and at night the crew slept in cabins, tents and on the yachts. Shooting from the ice and snow covered deck of a yacht in temperatures well below zero is not something I enjoyed. And to top it all off the weather was pretty grim fro most of the shoot. Heavy snow showers, freezing temperatures and towards the end strong winds.

Because image quality is paramount for this project I choses to use the best lenses I could, but at the same time space and time constraints dictated that zoom lenses would be desirable. We were shooting 16 bit raw as well as XAVC class 480 on my PMW-F5 and some pick-up shots in UHD XAVC-L on a PXW-FS5. For the PMW-F5 the primary lens was the Fujinon Cabrio XK6x20, 20-120mm PL zoom and to ensure we had similar looking images from the FS5 I used the new Fujinon XF 18-55mm. I have to say that I’m quite in love with both of these lenses.

fujinon-xk6x20-20-120mm-t3-5-pl-mount-lens-cc1-e1490981959479 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
Fujinon Cabrio XK6x20 PL mount cinema zoom. A beautiful lens!

The Cabrio 20-120 is a beautiful lens and it’s really nice to have a servo zoom that is truly parfocal. The 20-120 produces really nice images even in the most challenging of conditions and at T3.5 it’s reasonably fast throughout the entire zoom range. This was the lens that I used for the majority of the shoot, in particular for the many night scenes we shot. The E-Mount 18-55 on the FS5 produces images that matched really well with the bigger lens and camera. This is a combination I would love to use on more shoots where the budget will allow.

One particular scene that we had to shoot was particularly challenging. It was a set up shot of a night time arrival of a couple of snowmobiles at a Sami camp site. The Sami people are the indigenous people of Northern Norway and they have a particular style of tent know as a Laavu which is similar to a teepee or wigwam. The idea behind the shot was to have the snow scooters arriving with headlights blazing and for the drivers to then enter the tent lit only by the light of a campfire inside the tent. At the time of the shoot it was snowing heavily and was totally dark. Turn off the lights of the snowmobiles and you could not see a thing.

A007C001_170317I9snwscter-wide-1.-e1490980652498 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
Wide shot of the snowmobiles arriving at the camp in the dark.

While modern cameras like the F5 are very sensitive, the light of a campfire inside a tent will not adequately light a scene like this on it’s own. I didn’t want a totally dark background, so I decided that I would subtly light the trees of the forest that we were in to add some drama and give some depth to the background and a sense of being in a forest.

In-tent-wide-e1490980747645 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
A slightly closer shot of the tent with backlit trees behind it.

As we were travelling continuously on this shoot there was no space for a large or complex lighting kit and the remote location meant we needed battery powered lights. In addition I knew before we left that there was a chance of bad weather so I needed lights that would work whatever mother nature decided to throw at us.

snw-scter-start-e1490980892561 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
A snow scooter comes into the shot. You can see just how heavily it was snowing in this shot.

I decided to take a set of 3 Light & Motion Stella battery powered LED lights. It’s just as well I had the Stella lamps as on top of all the other difficulties of the shoot the weather decided it was not going to play ball. We had to shoot the scene (and much of the shoot) in the middle of a snow storm. Fortunately the Stella lights are completely waterproof, so I didn’t need to worry about rain or snow protection. Just set them up turn them on and use the built in dimmer to set the light output.

To light the scene I set up a Stella Pro 5000 in the woods behind the Sami tent, aimed through the trees and pointed directly towards the camera. I chose to backlight the trees to provide a sense of there being trees rather than lighting them. I felt this would look less lit than throwing a ton of light into the forest from the front and I’m pleased with the result.

20170317_201335-e1490980965481 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
A Light & Motion Stella Pro 5000 was used to back light the trees and tent. The heavy snow was no problem as the light is totally waterproof.

The Stella Pro 5000 is very bright for a compact battery operated light, it’s 5000 lumen 120 degree output that is pretty close to what you would get from a 200W HMI, it’s very bright. It has a very high CRI and gives out great quality daylight balanced light.  It was positioned so that the light itself was behind the tent on a small bank, about 20m back in the woods. You couldn’t see it in the shot, but the light coming through the trees created shafts of light in the snow and the trees appeared as silhouettes. It added depth and interest to what would have otherwise been a near totally black background.

20170317_203855-e1490981224538 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
Light & Motion Stella 2000 used to light the forground, again the lamp is waterproof so bad weather is no problem.

Then to provide a small amount of light so that we could see the riders of the snow scooters as they walked to the tent I used a Stella 2000. I didn’t really want the light from this lamp to be too obvious as this would really make the scene look “lit”. I didn’t need the full 2000 lumen output so I used the built in dimmer to reduce the output to around 70%.

The third light was a small Stella 1000 and this was placed inside the tent with a scrunched up orange gel. The Stella 1000 would typically be used as a camera top light, but it’s full dimmable and produces a very high light quality, making it suitable for many applications. The creases and folds in the orange gel helped break up the light a little creating a less lit look sympathetic to the fire inside the tent.

in-tent-mid-e1490981340247 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
A Stella 1000 with orange gel was used inside the tent to give the light from the fire a small boost.

It allowed me to increase the illumination in the tent, adding to the light from the fire without it being obvious that the tent interior was lit. For some of the shots I had an assistant sit in the tent, out of shot and slowly move the gel in front of the light to add a little movement to the light to mimic the firelight even better.

sihuette-e1490981444887 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
One particular shot on the storyboard was the silhouette of the drivers entering the tent. The Stella 1000 really helped punch trough the canvas sides of the tent.

At the moment I can’t show you the footage. That will have to wait until after the launch of the TV. But I’m really pleased with the way this scene came out. It’s challenging trying to shoot in the dark, in a blizzard, in temperatures well below freezing. Every aspect of getting this scene was hard. Opening a flight case to get out some kit meant getting snow on everything inside it. Just positioning the light up the woods was tough, the snow was up above my knees as I waded through it. Operating the camera is so much harder when it has a rain cover on it. The viewfinder was constantly misting up as snow fell on it non stop. Seeing the witness marks on the lens is difficult (although thankfully the marks on the Fujinon 20-120 are huge and easy to see).

20170317_205922-e1490981701785 Anatomy of a shot. Night Scene in Arctic Norway - Fujinon lenses, Stella Lights.
The Fujinon Cabrio XK6X20 lens all iced up at the end of the day. After shooting out in sub zero temperatures don’t take the camera inside until you are sure you have wrapped for the day!

But sometimes it’s challenges like these that make the job interesting. I know I was cursing and swearing at times trying to make these shots work, but seeing the scene come to life in the grade is all the more rewarding.

I’ll be writing more about the Fujinon 20-120 very soon, so why not subscribe to my blog using the subscribe bottom on the left.

Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.

20161012_141332-1024x576 Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.
The diminutive but incredibly bright Stella 1000 from Light & Motion.

I have been loaned a set of 4 Stella lights to test. I have the Stella 1000, 2000, 5000 Pro and 7000 Pro to play with and test. I’m going to take a quick look at the 1000/2000 now and will write up the 5000/7000 in a later article. These lamps are made by Californian company Light & Motion (www.lightandmotion.com) and I have to admit that this is a new brand to me. The portable lighting market is full of many different lights from different manufacturers, so it’s a tough market to stand out in. However these lights really do stand out from the crowd for many different reasons.

Build Quality: If you are going to stick a light on the top of a news camera it had better be tough. It’s going to get bumped, bashed, knocked and generally have a tough life. The Stella lamps are all beautifully made. The bodies are made from a very robust feeling plastic material while the lamp surround is made out of anodised aluminium that acts as a heatsink to keep the lamps cool. They have been built to withstand being dropped onto concrete from 1m multiple times without breaking and while I haven’t actually tested this, I do believe that they would survive this and the rigours of life on top of an ENG camera.

20161012_141426-1024x576 Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.
The slightly larger Stella 2000 lamp.

Power: The lamps have built in high capacity batteries. You don’t need to buy batteries or run the lamps of the cameras batteries. The internal battery in the Stella 1000 will run it for an hour on full power and around 7 hours at low power. The brighter 2000 will give about 50 mins at full power and 6 hours on low power. If you want longer run times you can attach an adapter to run the lamp from an external power source. Re-charging is fast at a little under 2 hours from flat and you can pack these in the hold of an aircraft as the battery is installed internally and under the current restrictions for Li-Ion batts on aircraft.

Control: The lamps have a built in dimmer that allows you to select one of 6 different brightness levels. Being LED units there is no  color temperature change as you dim the lamps. The dimmer control can be locked in the off position to prevent accidental operation, plus the lamps have a thermal cutoff to prevent damage if left on by mistake when covered or perhaps packed in your luggage. There are 3 LED’s that indicate the batter state and dimming level.

20161012_141506-1024x576 Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.
Dimming and power control of the Stella 2000 portable video light.

High Quality Light: Instead of the more common LED panel design with an array of a large number of small LED’s the Stella’s feature a single high power Chip 5000K LED.  This gives a beam angle of 120 degrees and the light is very uniform across this entire spread. The lamp heads are designed to take modifier lenses that can be used to reduce the beam spread to 50 degrees and 25 degrees if you need more of a spot light. I used the 25 degree fresnel adapter to turn the Stella 1000 to a mini spot light and it was very effective.

20161012_141432-1024x576 Stella 1000 and Stella 2000 Camera Lights.
The high intensity 90 CRI/90 TLCI chip LED of the Light & Motion Stella 2000

The quality of the light from these lamps is very good. The have a CRI of 90 as well as a TLCI of 90. They are also flicker free so suitable for shooting at high frame rate. In use I found the lamps gave great skin tone rendition and I didn’t see any of the green cast that is often common with lower quality LED lamps.

These are surprisingly bright lamps. The Stella 1000 is 1000 lumens and surprise, surprise, the Stella 2000 is 2000 lumens. That’s one heck of a lot of light from such a small and compact unit. Everyone that I have shown these lights to has been impressed by the intensity of the light output. The Stella 1000 is similar to a 75W tungsten lamp and the 2000 close to a 200W tungsten lamp. As the Stella’s are daylight balanced if you are using them as a fill light when shooting into the sun there is no need to gel them as you would with a tungsten light. Add to that the ability to use a clip on fresnel lens to narrow the beam angle and you are approaching the performance of 300W gelled tungsten fresnel fixture but with a compact battery operated lamp. I would consider the Stella 2000 as a replacement for an Arri 300 fresnel in many applications.

Waterproof! The Stella 1000 and 2000 are waterproof! Not just shower and splash proof, but completely waterproof. They can be operated underwater at depths of up to 100m with needing to buy any extra seals or fit any bungs or plugs. I know that when I shooting in adverse weather conditions this will be a big deal as normally the camera will have a nice fitted cover, but the top light is almost always left exposed to the elements. Now I don’t need to worry.

Light and Motion have a wide range of accessories for these lamps including all kinds of different mounts and handles.  As well as the usual barn doors there are some clever light modifiers including the clip on 25 degree fresnel lens, a clip on 50 degree lens, a clip on diffuser, gel holder and glo bulb.

So far I have been really impressed by what these small lamps can do.  They may not have variable color temperature, but the consistency and quality of the light they produce is amazing. The companies tag line is “Beyond Bright” and I’m inclined to agree.

I’ve also been loaned the Stella 5000 Pro and 7000 Pro to test. I’ll be writing about these beauties in the coming weeks!