Lighting setup: Studio lighting with lasers!

I’m someone who gets bored extremely quickly and although there’s probably a modern medical term for that ‘personality trait’ today, I choose to lean into this quality as it typically forces me to keep playing with new ideas AKA ‘be creative’.

With this creative itch always niggling at the back of my brain, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to keep things interesting in the studio. Sure, there is a time and place for tried and true lighting setups, but it’s always fun to break the rules and try something completely different once in a while. With this in mind, I’m continually searching for new ways to illuminate my subjects. Sure, there are thousands of purpose-built lighting modifiers for us to try, but there are also tons of other, far more ‘creative’ ways to illuminate our subjects too.

My wife can attest to this but I have boxes of ‘nerd-shit’ as she calls it, which contain vast numbers of items that emit light. Some of them don’t even emit light at all and an abstract silver fruit bowl and silver-painted satellite dish all patiently await their moment to ‘shine’ in the studio.

I’m not exaggerating either, I really do have boxes of this stuff that I purchase and think ‘I’ll use that one day’ and today was the turn of an old laser pen I’d bought many years ago.

Laser Pen

You’ll be pleased to hear that this week’s setup involves a very affordable light as the light in question is actually just a simple laser pen which can be purchased for around £10 – £15. There’s nothing particularly fancy about these laser pens, although if you want to get some interesting shots with a little variety, I recommend getting one that comes with some additional filters and features. For example, the most common colour these lasers come in is green. I’m not a huge fan of green on the skin for portraits so I’d recommend getting one with either a red or blue variant.

The other important thing to look for is the filters that come with them. As we know, all lasers are emitted from a single point and as cool as this is, the single red dot is not very exciting to look at when used in conjunction with studio portraits unless you’re going for the assassin cosplay look. With this in mind, I recommend you find a laser that comes with a bunch of filters to spread, separate, scatter and otherwise modify that single beam.

As I mentioned, there are a multitude of options, none of them are particularly expensive and I’ll speak about what I went with later in the article.

You’ve Been Warned: I know you’re not an idiot, but if I don’t say this, I know I’ll get messages about it, but please be careful when using lasers. Don’t point them in your eye and don’t point them directly into your camera as lenses can magnify them to the point that they could damage the sensor. Most of these commercially available lasers are fine as long as you’re not staring into to them for prolonged periods, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Plus, always pass this warning along to the models and team on set too.

The Setup

Now that you know what we’re dealing with in regards to the specialist light included in this setup, I’ll go over the setup in full and then break down any pertinent sections afterwards.

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

• Position small light set to a blue colour/attach blue gel against white backdrop
• Place white key-light up high and angled down towards model
• Have a large soft-light set to red/red gel attached behind you pointed towards backdrop
• Position smaller light just out of shot as fill-light set to red/red gel attached
• Lastly, place laser pen up high next to key-light and angle towards model

Kit Used

• 2x Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro ($1,499.00)
• 1x NEO 3 Pro $749.00
• 1x R120 Parabolic ($499.99) attached to the AEOS
• 2x (joined) Godox TL30 ($89.00)
• Laser Pen
• White Backdrop

Camera Settings

• Camera – Nikon D850
• Lens – 24-70mm f2.8
• Shutter Speed – 1/125th
• Aperture – f2.8
• ISO – 200
• Kelvin – 4300K
• Focal Length – ~58mm

The Results

Click to enlarge any of the shots below.

Breaking it Down

I’m sure a lot of this is fairly straightforward to many of you and the core underlying setup of this shot is essentially your standard key-light, fill-light and background light. But let’s go over a couple of the details in case there’s anything that doesn’t make sense.

Background Light

I have my background light as a Rotolight NEO 3 Pro and the reason for that is because it’s small and very easy to hide behind the model. If you’re using a light back here, I’d advise the same and place it close enough to the backdrop to manage the vignette of colour accordingly. For example, place the light close enough, maybe 12 inches away (30cm) from the white background so that you get a small spot of colour. I have mine set to a bold blue colour that harmonises well with the vibrant red. For example, a deep navy-blue colour goes well alongside a bold blood-red colour.

Fill-Light

For this, I’m actually using 2 Godox TL30’s screwed together to make a 60cm tube light. I’ve only recently acquired this light, but it’s proving very useful as a fill light. Why? This tube works well when placed close as it spreads light along its length but the power of the light drops off very quickly. For example, it’ll be bright on the chest, but drop off to almost no power on the face making it very controllable. If you don’t have a tube here, then any typical fill-light like a small softbox or even a white umbrella can work well too. I have mine set to a bold red colour to match the red from the laser light.

Global Fill-Light

You’ve likely seen me use this technique a lot in my setups and it’s a very effective way to add complimentary light and colours to the scene. If you’re not sure what light I’m referring to here, then it’s the large softbox you can see in the diagram above. I have a Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro in my 120cm Softbox here, but again, any large softbox and light combo will work. I have mine set to the same bold red as my fill-light as well as the red laser. The one role of this light is to add a little illumination to the model’s shadow areas, but primarily it illuminates the dark vignette left via the blue background light.

Key-Light

The key-lights are typically the easiest light in a set to place as they’re what I refer to as my ‘objective’ lights. There is no ambiguity in their role on set as they must correctly expose the model’s skin. Other ‘subjective’ lights can be bright or dim based on personal taste, but the objective lights must be accurate. I’m using my favourite key with my Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro set to around 4500K, but you could also use a beauty dish here as an alternative.

Laser Pen

The fifth and final light here is the (tiny) star of the show, the laser pen. As you can see from the BTS shots above, I clamped it in place via a SuperClamp, but you can use whatever method you like to keep it where you want it. My advice for position; keep it as close to the key light as you can get. That way, neither the laser nor your key is casting conflicting shadows and again, you can see in the BTS above that it’s mounted right next to the AEOS.

Points to Keep in Mind

Laser Pen

I spoke about this at the top, but I’ll go into a little more detail here with regards to the laser pen. As I mentioned, try to get a red or blue one as the green (more popular) ones wont look good on the skin. By all means try it for yourself, but that’s just my recommendation. Alternatively, just get one that has all the 3 colours and play with what works best on the day. Edit: I’ve seen some lasers that also produce a violet-coloured laser – I could see that one being a cool colour to try too.

The other factor is the creative options when it comes to the laser filters. If you just purchase a simple laser pen (the one you tease those poor cats with), you’ll simply get a single, tiny bright dot. We want a laser with some filters that actually refract that single beam of light into a bunch of different shapes and looks.

Pictured above you can see some of the effects that come with the laser pen I tested. Not all of them are ideal for portraits, but the variety will help you find something that works. I personally preferred the dots and stars as they had a very noticeable effect on the skin.

Colours

I’m sure it’s fairly obvious by now that I love to incorporate colours into nearly all of my shots. Here I was choosing my coloured lights based on the laser colour being red. Red is a very bold colour so I opted for another equally bold colour to compliment it. That said, reds bold and dominating colour is pretty tricky to work with, so if you see some other coloured lasers on offer, definitely consider getting them as I could see the blue or even violet lasers being a little more versatile to work with.

If you’re not particularly confident with coloured lights then there’s nothing wrong with just trying white light instead. I could see a very bold red laser standing out nicely against regular white-light on the skin.

Closing Comments

This is one of those setups that is fun to play with. Will it make it into your regular rotation of looks? Maybe not, but pulling a few ideas out of the lighting toolbox every now and then is a lot of fun, plus you never know what other ideas may be triggered by this. After all, trying something new and being creative is never time wasted. I wish you luck and if you give this one a go and let me know if you do as I’d love to see the results.