justing the power level of the flash—I would move my light back another 1.6
feet so it would be 5.6 feet from my subject. If I needed another f-stop in re-
duction of light and could only move my light source, I would move it back
another 2.4 feet so that it would be a total of 8 feet from my subject.
In film days, this was easy to remember; these measurements were always
printed on the lens barrel, or what we called the aperture ring. Unfortunately,
lenses used with digital cameras rarely have aperture rings. Instead of seeing
an aperture ring on our lenses that clearly instilled the standard f-stop values
of 1.4, 1.8, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, and 22, we see digital displays in a viewfinder
that show those f-stops as well as 6.3, 7.1, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, etc.—and most
photographers don’t know that f/6.3 is really f/5.6 “plus^1 / 3 stop.”
While I grew up in the days of the “standard f/stops,” the real importance
here is how the f-stop, or aperture, is based on the Inverse Square Law, which,
once again, simply states that when you double the distance of the light to
your subject you’ve reduced light intensity falling on your subject to^1 / 4 of the
original amount. So if you had your light source 4 feet from your subject and
moved it to 8 feet from your subject, the flash output falling on your subject
would be^1 / 4 of its original value. If your meter provided a value of f/8 at 4
106 LIGHTING FOR GLAMOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
ABOVE AND FACING PAGE—Mirrors are
always great for capturing reflections
of the model. In these two images, I
took a camera position that allowed
me to feature either two or three re-
flections of the model, Jenni. These
images are from my “Wide Aperture”
theme, and I used the household
lighting as my sole light source. This
is where fast lenses (lenses with very
wide maximum apertures) come in
handy. (CAMERA:Canon EOS 5D fitted
with a Canon 85mm f/1.2L USM lens.
SETTINGS:85mm effective focal
length,^1 / 200 second shutter speed,
f/1.2, white balance at 3700K, ISO
100)