LIGHTING SPECIAL
WORDS Adrian Pennington
The most recent advancements in lighting tech are not just new toys, but fundamental philosophies and perspectives on the craft
T he concept of image-based lighting (IBL) is simple: lighting using images. It’s a well- established virtual lighting technique that uses calibrated photographic or videographic RGB colour information to generate subject and environment lighting. Virtual production popularised IBL as a method for motivating light with LED displays, but it’s becoming a more mainstream part of the cinematographer’s arsenal. “There’s rarely a case in which you can’t use it any more,” explains Tim Kang, principal engineer in imaging applications for lighting vendor Aputure.
IBL uses images displayed on LED set lights to produce realistic reflections and ambient lighting in a scene. It gives the cinematographer subtle lighting effects that help make objects appear as though they naturally belong in a given environment. The three main benefits are accuracy, time saving and much more control. “The biggest one for me is control,” says Kang. “We’ve been chasing naturalism in lighting for around 100 years, but we’re only able to approximate an image of the real world. “With IBL, you can get the naturalism you want and then control the variables and fix them much more directly. The
problem is that people still associate this concept with an incredibly niche, expensive LED environment, when in fact IBL is a fundamental lighting philosophy. It involves using any kind of image – like a pattern painted live or a light card – as a lighting source. It also utilises a lighting control methodology that employs an entire environment of lighting fixtures – not merely displays – to generate IBL onto a scene.” There are now clear technical steps for transforming lighting fixtures into colour-accurate and video-driven lighting pixels. This is why Kang believes the entire craft of entertainment lighting
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