Talk:Rembrandt lighting

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It seems wrong to use chiaroscuro style paintings for examples of a photographic lighting technique.

It's all visual art. Only different mediums. James Nachtwey, generally considered one of the best photographers working today, got his degree in art history and figured out all the photography stuff himself. --69.134.73.174 16:49, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This article asserts that "Rembrandt lighting is a combination of short and butterfly lighting". That entire paragraph seems fundamentally incorrect, for a number of reasons:

First, butterfly lighting generally consists of key light in front of and above subject, casting that unique shadow below the nose, but generally fully lighting the cheeks. That's very different from (and in my opinion, inconsistent with) Rembrandt lighting, in which a side of the face is largely in shadow except for a characteristic light area below the eye. Yes, in Rembrandt lighting the key light needs to be bit higher than in some other lighting set ups (in order to cast the lower portion of the jaw and cheek in shadow), but if that's what the author was referring to when suggesting that it was like butterfly lighting, I think the choice of terminology is confusing at best.

Second, it suggests that Rembrandt lighting consists of short lighting. But I've seen plenty of pictures, both paintings and photographs, that have Rembrandt lighting which is not employing short lighting, but rather the light is on the side of the face closest to the camera, in effect, broad lighting. (Amusingly, all the Rembrandt paintings that are used to illustrate the effect all feature broad lighting, not short lighting.)

It seems that Rembrandt lighting neither exhibits butterfly lighting, nor requires short lighting. It seems that it's all a function of the nature of the shadow the nose casts on the side of the face opposite the main light, which the article accurately describes. The rest of this article has got it basically right, but I think that the reference to these other lighting types is off. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eoonline (talk • contribs) 14:44, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, that whole paragraph doesn't make sense and conflicts with the examples shown. I'm taking it out.Afuhz (talk) 16:18, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"The key in Rembrandt lighting is creating the triangle or diamond shape of light underneath the eye." I am looking at the example images and I do not see this triangle or diamond shape. Could you add another image, or crop one to clearly illustrate what is being described? That would help greatly. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.44.140.134 (talk) 16:52, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's broad lighting. There's no triangle, or actually, any light on the right side of the face, making it an entirely different lighting technique.

I totally agree. --Forodin (talk) 21:26, 7 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]