It’s August 2022, and I’ve got my head in my hands. I’ve just set up a new purchase from CVP, and all I can think about are the countless shorts and gigs that could have looked so much better if I’d had this tool back then. It would have been a complete game-changer. I knew it was the missing piece for those shots that always felt just a touch off, as if they were lacking something.
The tool I’m talking about? The Aputure Spotlight.
What Is Hard Light and Soft Light?
Now, when it comes to entry-level filmmaking and online content creation, we often gravitate toward soft light because hard light can be too harsh for everyday setups. We aim to use soft boxes, silks, diffusion sheets, and whatever else is available to us to spread and diffuse the light.
These lights are perfect for tight interiors, like a living room, but as your set grows, diffusion alone won’t cut it. You’ll need the punch of hard light to shape the scene and mimic natural daylight.
As such, when viewing behind-the-scenes stills, you’ll often see large HMIs beaming down into an interior to simulate natural daylight.
The issue is that for a no-budget or content-creator setup, having a light like this is usually out of reach. And using an LED in its default state with a reflector dish (image below) often just floods the room with unshaped illumination. This is where the spotlight becomes essential.
If that introduction has excited you, but you’re not entirely sure of the difference between hard and soft light, let me give you a quick debrief before you continue.
Hard light:
- Produces sharp, well-defined shadows
- Creates high-contrast lighting with strong highlights and deep shadows
- It can create a dramatic and stylized look but can also appear harsh and unflattering
- Suitable for action and dramatic scenes or for accentuating textural details
- Created from a small, powerful source
Soft light:
- Produces softer, less-defined shadows
- Creates low-contrast lighting with subtle highlights and shadows
- Creates a more natural and flattering look
- Suitable for portraits, beauty shots, and scenes where natural, unobtrusive lighting is desired.
- Created from a large source.
Now that we have that covered, let’s look at how to use hard light.
Modifying Hard Light
Depending on the model you buy, some LED lights will ship with a reflector dish that helps direct the light into a more controllable area (usually at a 55-degree angle). However, it’s still not very flattering. We need more control.
So, instead, you might attach one of these to your lights. This is a Fresnel lens, similar to tungsten ARRI Fresnel lamps that once crowded every aspiring filmmaker’s wardrobe.
Like an ARRI junior Fresnel lamp, an LED Fresnel mount will do the same thing; it accurately finesses the beam angle of the light source. So now, instead of having that wide 55-degree beam, we can focus it down to 12-40 degrees. This concentration also makes the light up to twice as bright
The Spotlight
However, what I’m after is that sharp cut of light, the kind you get from the morning sun piercing straight through a window. So, let’s finally bring out the spotlight mount.
I’m sure many will be familiar with the concept of a spotlight from theatre or music gigs. A spotlight in theatre is used to illuminate specific areas or performers on stage, drawing attention to them and highlighting their movements or actions. The spotlight mount seeks to do the same on a more portable level.
This mount also helps us achieve ten times the brightness (or intensity); the high-resolution lenses produce an even beam of light with minimal light falloff on the edges.
(It’s worth noting that while I’m using the gear from Aputure, many other brands offer a spotlight, too — like Godox, Nanlite, and Nanlux, and I’m sure SmallRig is pretty close behind.)
Now, all of a sudden, we have a controllable beam of light instead of the criminally uncontrollable hard light from the LED when using the reflector dish or Fresnel lens. This allows us to position this touch of light in places that would have otherwise been off-limits with the other modifiers. Let’s look at two examples of how useful this tool can be.
Using the Spotlight for Background Interest
In the example below, our character has received a text, and it’s not good news. If this is the same character from our negative fill tutorial, he’s not having excellent luck lately. Overall, I’m happy with the lighting on our subject.
I have a Nova P300c as our key light, and this has a softbox and ¼ Grid Diffusion Sheet that will further soften the light. While this light is excellent for my subject, I’m using a flag to keep it from spilling onto the wall. Because the wall has a dark green floral decoration, it, in turn, acts as a negative fill. It looks moody and cinematic, my two favorite things.
However, this area in the back is killing me. It’s plain, lifeless, and uninspired. We can now use our calculated splash of light from the spotlight mount.
One of the core features of the mount is that it doesn’t just reduce the beam angle; it also incorporates shutter blades, further customizing the light beam. We can shave off specific sides of the light, and with a dual drop-in slot, we can insert gobos and gels to create a customized light display. The focusing knob helps soften or sharpen the edge of the light beam, and the lens can also be swapped to achieve different beam angles. You can see why I love this tool!
So, using the spotlight with the gobo attachment that mimics Venetian blinds, I can paint a touch of light to the background. The goal isn’t to distract or to flaunt but to add a touch of interest to the composition to keep that area from falling into an ugly magnolia smudge.
Remember, it’s crucial that when using the spotlight for this, its intensity isn’t brighter than the key light on your subject. If so, reduce the intensity with an ND filter.
I love this look, but depending on the project, sometimes it’s not suitable. Therefore, I would like to present my second favorite use of the spotlight mount: natural hard sunlight.
Using the Spotlight for Sunlight
Often, we set our key light to be motivated by a source presented in the establishing shot. In the case of our example, the window is near the kitchen sink. However, if we’re replicating daylight from the window, it would be unnatural to have the talent solely illuminated by soft light when the sunlight coming in through the window is hard.
So, how about the best of both worlds?
You can establish the key light with our soft source, then use the spotlight mount to direct some hard light onto the subject’s torso.
In the example above, I’ve removed the gobo from the spotlight and feathered the edges using the focus knob. I then tilted the mount downward to avoid the subject’s face, and I have the hard light hitting his shoulder, hands, and table. As a by-product, this hard light also creates bounce light from the table onto our subject’s face.
So, quite like natural sunlight, we have this hard light coming in through the window and hitting our talent, but it’s not catching his face and becoming distracting. The falloff of the hard light looks so natural and organic; I would never think it was artificial if I were a viewer.
In both examples, the additions to the scene were minimal, but they both made significant compositional differences that will help take your cinematography up a notch. These are just two examples of the spotlight, but upon acquiring a tool from whichever brand takes your fancy, you’ll see how much the world of painting with light opens up.
Bonus Tip
One more bonus tip before I leave you. The spotlight also serves as an excellent tool for creating bounce light. Usually, it would be impractical to use a hard light to bounce off a wall in a small location due to the wide angle of the hard light.
However, when using the spotlight, we can shape the beam to a relatively small size, aim it toward the wall, and have the talent standing near receive illumination from the bounced light.
I won’t arrive on set without this tool; the options are endless.
So, let’s talk pricing.
The Aputure Spotlight comes in three lens options: 19°, 26°, and 36°, which will provide different beam angles.
These typically retail for around $499, which may not be budget-friendly for our no-budget readers! However, it’s worth noting that you can pick up the budget version from Amaran for around $290—a solid steal! And remember, as we noted in our article Aputure vs Amaran, they are just the budget line of Aputure. So they will still work with Aputure products.
