Lighting Zones to Achieve Different Looks

Mark Wallace from Adorama TV explains what groups or zones are when you shoot with flash lights, either speedlights or studio lights. Zones are used to turn groups of lights on and off. It helps you save the time by allowing you to control these zones from your camera. Mark set up a lighting scheme in his studio to demonstrate how it all works. His model will be sitting still and by controlling the lights Mark is going to modify the lighting that comes to his model. This is extremely useful if you need to make photos of your clients in a studio because you will be able to shoot several different looks with all the lights already set up and all you have to do is turn on and off light zones.

The key light is always a beauty dish, then he has a small soft box as a fill light from below. Then he uses V-flats lighted by flashes. They reflect and light the model from both sides. Also Mark has a light flash pointing to the background. And there is a soft box that lights the background evenly from below.

By showing diagrams Mark illustrates how different lights work and how you can use a combination of lights to achieve different looks.