One of the holy grails of beauty retouching is perfect eyes. Actually, getting good lighting on the eyes would probably be one of the first things you would lean in a beauty retouching workshop, maybe after perfecting skin. One of the “secrets” to getting good light on the eyes is getting a slight moon-shaped highlight on the bottom of the eye. Dave Piper covered that a while back on his eye’s retouching tutorial, but what if you wanted to get this in camera?
I just stumbled upon this great lighting modifier over at Neil van Niekerk’s Tangents blog. It is called the The Eyelighter and only does one thing, but it does it well: It provides a light that gives an arched reflection in the eye.
Neil did a comparison of lighting a person with and without the eyelighter and it actually provides more than just nice highlights, it also provides a great glamor fill light.
It is not a small modifier, nor is it a cheap one. Fully extended it is about 1.5 meter over 0.5 meters and it will set you back about a third of a grand, so it may not be the first modifier to put in your bag. If you are just starting out you may want to consider a foam board for under fill instead.
What did you say? You want a full 25 minutes primer on this modifier? Got it:
[Westcott The Eyelighter | $300 via Neil van Niekerk’s Tangents (who was also kindly allowed us to use the photos]
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