Left or right lighting?

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Stephane Savard
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Left or right lighting?

Post by Stephane Savard »

Out of curiosity, what do people have as a preference for the direction of lighting... from the left, or from the right? Looking at various setups, I notice that several people have their hand-held setups with the lighting permanently mounting on a specific side.

I myself prefer lighting from the left, however the mounting bracket I use (custom, made from ram-mounts) allows me to position it to the top or to some extent, to the right. However I tend to set it up from the left and leave it be until the day's hunting for bugs is over.

A few terrible quality pics of my setup as example...

Image

Image

However, I now tend to use only a single ram-mount arm instead of two, and when shooting, I move the diffusor much closer to the subject.

AndrewC
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Post by AndrewC »

"normal" lighting would be from above and into the face of your subject so unless you have trained bugs you need something flexible.

Andrew

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

Direction may be partly determined by the need to avoid shadows e.g. from surrounding leaves. Otherwise, the main light should be from more or less above (the camera) with fill from at least 270 degrees below that. A separate consideration is that having the main light above the subject minimisies fall-off of illumination behind it.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

LordV
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Post by LordV »

I suspect it's a matter of personal taste. Currently on one setup I have the flash on the right at about 2pm and on my other set up it's on left about 11am. I just get used to where the light source is and often angle the camera to suit of sometimes move the subject around if I'm holding the leaf it's on.

I actually don't like the light being overhead which may be slightly more natural but does tend to give dark shadows under subjects and often very bad reflections.
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morfa
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Post by morfa »

For handheld shooting I prefer to have it on the right for two reasons:

1) If I want to get a very low angle against a flat surface in it's better to have the left side free since the right side is already occupied by the grip. Imagine you want to get down really close to the ground. With the flash on the left you get both the grip and your hand holding the camera between the optical axis and the ground. If you have the bracket to the right you can get down much lower and I think it's much more comfortable holding the camera that way.

2) More importantly: I often find myself holding the camera/flash with only my right hand while the other one is occupied with something else – stabilizing the perch, holding a reflector or hanging from a branch ;-). Holding the camera this way with the flash on the left induces a substantial torque on the rig which can be extremely straining in the long run! With the bracket on the right you get much better balance and the rig will feel lighter.
Last edited by morfa on Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

enricosavazzi
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Post by enricosavazzi »

For illustrations of scientific literature, it is generally stated that the main illumination should come from a top-left direction. This is often specified as a requirement in the "instructions for authors" of scientific journals. It may be necessary to make exceptions, but in this case the direction of illumination should be made clear in the figure caption, in order to avoid an incorrect interpretation of the relief of three-dimensional features (which may look reversed if illuminated from other directions).

There is a whole lot of conventions also for the orientation of specimens (e.g., gastropod shells should be oriented with the apex uppermost, but the French used to disagree with this until relatively recently and placed it lowermost). In the case of organisms in life position, most of the conventions are quite obvious - they should not be illustrated in an unnatural orientation.

In photography not intended for scientific publication, anything goes - depending on taste and the message one wants to convey.
--ES

AndrewC
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Post by AndrewC »

enricosavazzi wrote:...

There is a whole lot of conventions also for the orientation of specimens (e.g., gastropod shells should be oriented with the apex uppermost, but the French used to disagree with this until relatively recently and placed it lowermost). In the case of organisms in life position, most of the conventions are quite obvious - they should not be illustrated in an unnatural orientation.
.....
So are lateral views of insects meant to be looking left or right ?

Andrew
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enricosavazzi
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Post by enricosavazzi »

AndrewC wrote:
enricosavazzi wrote:...

So are lateral views of insects meant to be looking left or right ?

Andrew
I am not an entomologist, so I don't know for sure if there are special conventions. For arthropods in general, when you have only dorsal and/or ventral views, they are most often vertical with the head uppermost. Lateral views can be either left lateral or right lateral, and in general are oriented with the body horizontal and the legs hanging downward. When dorsal/ventral and lateral views are combined in the same illustration, it seems customary to orient all of them horizontal, probably to make a better use of space (it would be wasteful to combine a vertical and a horizontal figure side-by-side, since a lot of space would remain empty, and published space is money). In this case, the head in all figures should point toward the same direction (i.e., not a dorsal view looking to the left and a ventral view looking to the right).

Some special groups like barnacles have different conventions. They are sessile and generally seem to be illustrated with the substrate lowermost, regardless of the actual life orientation (some actually hang down from the substrate) or where the head actually is (mostly gone, actually).
--ES

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

A quick flip through several of my field guides (from birds down to insects) shows that some have almost all lateral views facing to the left, whereas others have a mix. Clearly, with somewhat L-shaped subjects, such as birds, alternating left and right gets more on the page.

It would not surprise me if editors would flip images (various categories of subjects, not just plants or animals) to get the required orientation (e.g. left view changed to right). I have seen it done for articles for general readership and have had my transparencies flipped. (The change which used a negative from a transparency was not effective!).

Harold
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enricosavazzi
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Post by enricosavazzi »

Harold Gough wrote: It would not surprise me if editors would flip images (various categories of subjects, not just plants or animals) to get the required orientation (e.g. left view changed to right). I have seen it done for articles for general readership and have had my transparencies flipped. (The change which used a negative from a transparency was not effective!).
Harold
It may work if the direction of illumination is not a critical factor, but if a journal specifies "illumination from top-left", reversing a picture also reverses the direction of illumination. So the lesson here is perhaps "If you can, take pictures of a specimen from both sides, and let the editor/author choose". A good reason for reversing a picture taken in the field (where you are not in control of the direction of illumination) is the need to make the direction of illumination consistent in a composite picture made from several individual shots, which may have light coming from different directions.

There is actually one main reason for publishing mostly, or only, illustrations of specimens with the head facing toward the left, and it is connected with the requirement for illumination from the top left. In this orientation, the head is optimally illuminated, while facing the opposite direction it is illuminated from behind and has more shadow areas.
--ES

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

enricosavazzi wrote:A good reason for reversing a picture taken in the field (where you are not in control of the direction of illumination) is the need to make the direction of illumination consistent in a composite picture made from several individual shots, which may have light coming from different directions.
Interesting. Not something I would have thought of.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

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