OM Studio Photography — Studio portrait | omstudiophotography.com
Five ordered steps place the key, fill and hair lights by distance, height and power — checked at 2:1, then again at 4:1.
Step 1 — key light. Put a 400–600 Ws head in a 90 cm softbox 1.5 m from the subject, 45° off the camera axis and slightly above eye level. At half power it should meter f/8–f/11 at ISO 100; adjust power, not distance, to land in that window.
Step 2 — fill light. Place the fill on the lens axis, close to the camera, so its shadows fall behind the subject. Meter it alone and set it 1 stop under the key: that is a 2:1 ratio, the soft commercial starting point.
Step 3 — hair light. Behind the subject and a full head above the crown. This needs a 2.4–2.7 m ceiling; below 2.4 m the light sits too close and leaves a hotspot, so seat the subject or separate with a lit background instead.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
Step 4 — camera. ISO 100, shutter at or under the 1/160–1/250 s sync limit, white balance at 5,500–5,600 K for the flash. The 3,000–3,200 K modelling lamps are for previewing the pattern only.
Step 5 — verify, then re-check at 4:1. Meter both sides of the face with all lights on: the key side should read the working aperture, the fill side 1 stop under. For the dramatic version, drop the fill one more stop to 2 stops under — 4:1 — and meter again; the key side, and therefore the camera settings, should not have moved.
If the fill side does move the key reading, the fill is spilling — feather it or slide it back along the axis. The numbers behind each step are on the Key-to-Fill Light Ratios for Portraits and Softbox Distance and Aperture Chart pages.
Further reading