The setup Key and Fill lighting tips 01 06 02 04 03 05

learn a pro setup that gives you ultimate control over the look of your subject

01 Key light

Our key light is a Rotolight Aeos LED. Its output (100%) is set at higher than the fill light opposite (also a Rotolight Aeos). It’s positioned off to the left of the camera and above the face in a classic Rembrandt lighting position, with a triangular shadow forming on the opposite cheek.

02 highlights

The key light creates bright highlights on the subject’s right cheek. By metering for these highlights we’ll achieve a correct exposure. As the key light is at a more acute angle than the fill light, the highlights fall in a directional angle across the face, giving it depth and form.

03 Fill light

The fill light is set at a lower output than the key light. It’s positioned to the right of the camera so that it pushes light into the shadows on the subject’s left cheek. We can control the strength of the fill either by changing the output setting, or by moving the light in closer or further away.

04 shadows

The key light casts deep shadows on the subject’s left cheek. By controlling the strength of the fill light, we can decide how deep we want these shadows. This gives us control over the contrast on the subject’s face – we can make the lighting even and soft, or punchy and hard.

05 camera

The what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature of LED lighting makes things easy as we can judge the key and fill by eyeballing it, and use a semi-automated exposure mode so the camera meters the scene. Here we’re in Manual mode with f/4, 1/200 sec and Auto ISO (800).

06 Background light

We’ve used a third Rotolight LED (a Neo 2) to lift the background. This isn’t essential to the key and fill technique, but it does give us a cleaner look to the portrait with a graduated vignette across the backdrop. It also shows how, once you’ve set up for key and fill, you can begin adding extra lights.