How Important is Learning the Science of Light

Run&Gun said:
I think a lot of it was we just became accustomed to aspects of the "imperfect" light sources and accepted it and tuned it out. But also, they were not consistent. Pretty much tungsten is tungsten, but HMI's shifted noticeably as the lamps aged and flo's were subject to inconsistency in the tube batches(my presumption is the phosphorus coatings), just like LED's can look vastly different between manufacturers. So you could shoot something with one or both lighting technologies and everything looked great or it could look not so hot, depending on the condition of the lamps. The first set of tubes for my Kino's looked great. Appeared very clean, on cam. But I had replacement tubes(actual Kino branded tubes) that looked like complete garbage(so, so magenta). AND they had to be run in, before they hit the optimal light that they could produce. Again, don't miss Kino's one tiny bit, but HMI's, especially the big stuff, isn't going away. The bigger and more powerful you go, most of the LED advantages go away vs. HMI's, at least currently.
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I would say that the little issues I'm noticing are probably far below the threshold of what most of the audience would notice...

But the overall quality of skintones and healthy complexion of the meat -- they're definitely going to feel that whether or not they realize it
 
Interesting conversation here!

In the past, we captured images on fixed color temperature and fixed exposure index celluloid film stocks. These stocks were exposed via a relatively narrow variety of light sources, including natural sunlight, arc and discharge, incandescent, and halogen, all of which could be altered with gel or grip modifiers.

Daylight, a full-spectrum source, is capable of very accurately and predictably rendering colors as we perceive them. Though skewed into the warmest parts of the visible white spectrum, incandescent and tungsten sources are incredibly accurate as well, and provide the most visually appealing results. Why? Both natural daylight and halogen sources are more akin to a blackbody locus (curve) source - effectively a white hot metal rod or coil, falling predictably and accurately along the arc of warm to cool Kelvin color temperatures.

Asking LED sources, especially fixed or variable white fixtures, to accurately and consistently hit a point along that blackbody curve remains a challenge. Their relative inaccuracy can best be plotted using a correlated color temperature - it's "about" daylight or tungsten.

Having a stated CCT assigned to an emitter doesn't mean it’s always pretty. Mass manufacturing techniques for the consistent creation and application of the phosphor coatings necessary to make blue LEDs into accurate studio color (3200K) tend to vary and perfect examples remain elusive. Selective binning of the very best emitters ensure more consistency from chip to chip.

With multi-color LED fixtures, featuring RGB (plus Amber / Mint / DeepRed / WW / CW etcetera), we are required to mathematically plot our desired color / CCT to a single point on the CIE 1931 chromaticity chart, using recipes (metamers). These metamers are built from each individual emitter, in varying intensities, as they intersect the others. You must have two different emitters to create a line between them, always straight. They can create exactly the colors that fall along that line (e.g., 5600K – 3200K, with 4400K easily achieved, but green-magenta shift being impossible!).

Such metamers can give us quite accurate single points on the CIE chart, falling within Rec709 and the wider Rec2020 spaces. Still, this is not truly full-spectrum light, like the sun, and a series of spikes and voids almost always exist. Fixtures with excellent color science design and highest quality LED binning will deliver the most accurate color.

Of course, we now must also consider the modern camera’s sensor as we light, as we once would have the film stocks we were loading in the camera. Understanding the qualities, limitations, and engineered “sweet spots” with today’s digital platforms is just as important as knowing how we could push, pull (or otherwise abuse) a given celluloid recording stock.

For example, I used to run up against how Panasonic’s 3CCD cameras would improperly render purples and blues – even under daylight. On more than one occasion, this was to the breaking point, where inaccurate color rendering caused a fair amount of trouble in the edit, where only basic and broad color-correction tools were available.

The short answer is, tungsten halogen and natural daylight will always look best to our eyes. Bringing LEDs and digital sensors together, we clearly can achieve “good enough” and increasingly remarkable images as both technologies continue to improve.
 
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Here is a tease of my meat shoot, daylight, aperture600 and a sprinkle of tungsten 300 with 1/2 ctb.
 

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Thanks for looking.
My plan is always max backlight.. but then I got an 18.24 black and shaded the board behind the meat. Im never sure how to trade.. art with showing the product. I do feel that the flesh colours are solid (point of the thread?) with the different animals reading as different tones.

Kicker.. you mean fill? When the meat faced camera right we placed my aluminium stipple reflector (!)
 
morgan_moore said:
Kicker.. you mean fill? When the meat faced camera right we placed my aluminium stipple reflector (!)
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Nope, it doesn't need more fill.

Backlight comes right straight over the top of the subject from behind, and you need that. But you also need a kicker. A kicker is similar to a backlight, but comes from an oblique angle (still located behind the subject) on the fill side.

Basically, if you apply the same techniques that work for a nice, 5-point interview setup, it will work for meat (or anything else) the same way.

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While you can absolutely create professional-level portraits with a single light, using multiple lights will allow you create more advanced and precise setups that simply are not possible with just one source. One of the most important secondary lights a portrait photographer can use is the...
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Honestly doesn't look appealing at all no matter how it's lit. As a consumer, I'd prefer to see it presented as a restaurant would, sizzling, black or dark background, with a knife slicing into a juicy cut, red/green peppers or garnish to add color, but not cold bland sausage piled on top of a slab. My $0.02
 
On the earlier shots maybe, I do get the idea of catalogue meat sales. The meat itself is fine, the cutting board ruins it for me but I'm not sure what would make me like it, or that I would care how the picture looked since I would be evaluating quality and value more than presentation.
 
Tom Roper said:
Honestly doesn't look appealing at all no matter how it's lit. As a consumer, I'd prefer to see it presented as a restaurant would, sizzling, black or dark background, with a knife slicing into a juicy cut, red/green peppers or garnish to add color, but not cold bland sausage piled on top of a slab. My $0.02
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For sure.. I think this is oddly hard to do.

Im a 'journeyman' in that ive done commissions for years.

A commission.. "we want XYZ and Mavis will be dedcorating and .. and and."

Im not a style director. Im not going to say..
"it needs to be cooked, we are presenting it on slate with trimmings"

To me for such a shoot there are a million questions to put to the client (it is their brand/money/time)..
back ground (slate? paper? bloody board? retro tray? hot waitress with tray?)
cooked or not?
ingredients or not?
inspiration or not?

I put those to them.

I offered a moodboard first
(https://www.amazon.co.uk/photos/share/OyuYzoEzBWQ5Fity6eVzW8jpn0JdoGmDekjX58GZPwD)

I offered my darker table. I added the herb/spice accents (off brief) and did the shots with/without.
As it is a butcher.. they sell meat.. but I for sure would have loved a big cook off.. which is also expensive.

A web shop can be a huge job!

And dare I say I can light and almost focus.. so the challenge to me is to work with the client to trade off stuff..
speed
cost
effort
brand values
brand look
style/illustraive strength etc.
 
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Tom Roper said:
On the earlier shots maybe, I do get the idea of catalogue meat sales. The meat itself is fine, the cutting board ruins it for me but I'm not sure what would make me like it, or that I would care how the picture looked since I would be evaluating quality and value more than presentation.
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Yes I offered .. (and took in my van)
dark table
darker board
brown paper (bought on amazon 'in case')

The brown paper would be a new sheet for every product.. and I knew that blood build up is a problem on multi shoots!

My test shots had darker cleaner board and my 'funky baking tray' (green)
www.amazon.co.uk

2024_10_16_food_burgerTest

www.amazon.co.uk
 
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