Peter-Town

It's not about the humanicide, it's about avoiding awkwardness.

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SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Oblivious to the unforgiving judgments being passed on him every single day, local 2-year-old Caleb Gibson is completely unaware that he is the sole basis for six couples’ decisions not to have kids, sources said Friday. According to reports, the toddler has thus far failed to recognize that his temper tantrums and messy eating habits have motivated several of his mother’s friends, as well as a couple who were eating near Gibson’s family at a restaurant, to go their entire lives without ever raising children of their own.

I checked the store, it's made by someone who made one thing with an appropriate name:

So, I would first like to acknowledge that he drastically improved his own lighting in this video.

That's a beautiful upgrade. Though he could improve his subject separation by making the background a tad darker. And I might suggest moving that cabinet off center so it doesn't look like it is growing out of his shoulders. But I think he has his key light at a good distance and that edge light really adds dimension.

But the actual video was very frustrating and full of fundamental misunderstandings about how light works. Just like his last one.

I literally yelped at the screen at one point. I just couldn't keep that noise contained within my body.

He seems like he is genuinely trying to learn this. And he even mentions how difficult it is to get quality information. And that made me much more sympathetic because I had similar issues in my learning journey.

But he keeps confidently asserting that he has solved lighting for Hollywood. He claims that fresnel lights are some kind of forgotten knowledge and that filmmakers aren't aware of them anymore.

Every professional lighting person is well aware of fresnels and how to operate them.

There are just so many more modern options for lighting that fresnels have limited use cases. You've got grids and snoots and reflectors that are much easier to work with and don't require an entirely different light or a bulky, expensive attachment.

Fresnels are neat. They are basically efficient spotlights. Other light sources often wasted a lot of the light's energy by spilling it off to the sides. Fresnels concentrate the light's energy and focus it. They work well at long distances, which is why they are often used in lighthouses.

Fresnels let you create a tight, focused spotlight or you can expand that into a more fuzzy circle (a flood).

And you can fill a room with haze and get cool shafts of light.

But lights are now super efficient on their own and the need for fresnels has become very niche.

We now have projection lens attachments.

These adapt regular camera lenses and go on the front of a normal light and you can focus the beam, you can make it blurry, and you can insert internal "gobos" to create special effects.

Aside from being able to throw light a long distance with good intensity, this attachment does everything a fresnel does, along with a bunch of other creative options.

He also thinks fresnels are some secret to getting hard light and sharp shadows. But all you need to get hard light and sharp shadows is a small light source. A regular-ass house lightbulb can give you hard light and sharp shadows.

Remember... Big light = soft light. Small light = hard light.

Diffusion does not make a light soft. BIG diffusion makes light soft. Because it makes the light BIGGER.

The fresnel lens does not make the light hard. If you stood next to a lighthouse fresnel, it would illuminate you with soft light. Because its size at that distance is big.

He claims that hard light is better because some movies used to look like this.

Yes, this uses hard light. But the reason this looks so dramatic is actually the contrast. The hard light does provide great shadow density, but you also cannot forget this is black and white—which is perfectly suited to high contrast. But the main reason this photo looks cool is that the contrast is dimensional. The light is very close to her and so it has pleasing falloff into shadow.

But you can't always get lights super close to people. This kind of hard lighting is poorly suited for environments. When you have to light a room instead of a face, you have to put the lights farther away. And when you lose the contrast advantage of black and white, you get flat lighting that doesn't have much dimension.

I've been watching Columbo recently. It started in the 70s and almost exclusively used hard light.

That's what hard light looks like when you have to light an entire space from farther away.

Compare that to a more modern aesthetic where they use hard lights and soft lights and practical lights and they are able to shape the lighting design.

There is soft light on the characters but they have contrast and dimension. They use edge light for good subject separation. And all of the practical light sources you can see are part of the design. They help light the environment.

Practical lights in Columbo had almost no effect on the scene. They were overpowered by the hard lighting. These lamps are not lighting Columbo at all.

Soft light can be dimensional and have good contrast. And it doesn't need black and white to help carry the aesthetic.