Broadcast Engineer's Reference Book

J SummersFormerly Lighting Director, BBC

4.3 Studio Lighting

4.3.1 The Purpose of Lighting

Artificial lighting is needed for four main purposes:

• To ensure the presence of sufficient light to obtain an intelligible and technically satisfactory reproduction of the original scene. The level required will depend on the sensitivity of the system used, and will be affected by the stop number of the lens, the presence of colour filters or diffusers and the use of additional equipment such as an artist prompting device.

• To keep the scene contrast within the limits acceptable to the TV system. Colour cameras currently in use handle a contrast range of 30:1, but a sunlit exterior scene may have an inherent contrast range of 500:1. Additional light ...