Lighting Styles - Hard Light

Hard Light

Hard light sources cast shadows whose appearance of the shadow depends on the lighting instrument. For example, fresnel lights can be focused such that their shadows can be "cut" with crisp shadows. That is, the shadows produced will have 'harder' edges with less transition between illumination and shadow. The focused light will produce harder-edged shadows. Focusing a fresnel makes the rays of emitted light more parallel. The parallelism of these rays determines the quality of the shadows. For shadows with no transitional edge/gradient, a point light source is required.
When hitting a textured surface at an angle, hard light will accentuate the textures and details in an object.

Examples of hard light sources:

Open Face 

 This is an Open Face Arri 800w. Note there is no lens only the bare bulb and polished reflector behind it.


Fresnel











This is an Arri 650w Junior. It has a Fresnel Lens which can be more accurately focused but still produces a clean hard light.


The Sun
Unless diffused by clouds the sun is a very hard light source.