Inverse square law

The inverse square law is an equation that relates the intensity of a light source to the illumination it
produces at a given distance. Light diminishes over distance in accordance with the Inverse square law,
which states that doubling the light-to-subject distance reduces the light falling on the subject to one-
quarter. The inverse square law can be used to calculate the light output required from a light source
when setting up a photographic scene using artificial lighting, the invention of light meters however has
mostly illuminated the need to get out the pencil and ruler!

The Inverse Square Law relates the intensity of a light source to the
illumination it produces at any given distance. One-stop increments are
spread over a wider area the farther the light travels.

The inverse square law (ISL) is one of those principles of photography that drives people crazy. It’s a
fairly simply concept that’s broken down into a rather confusing sentence. It states that the intensity of an
effect such as illumination or gravitational force changes in inverse proportion to the square of the
distance from the source. That, to most people means absolutely nothing.
The law itself, in photography, applies to lighting. It applies to any sort of
lighting really but its most relevant application is with off camera lighting. In a
nutshell, the inverse-square law teaches us how light works over distance and
why the distance between your light source and your subject is so important.

Let's say we have a light source which is on full power and our subject is 1
meter away it. If we move our subject double the distance away from the light
(2 meters), how much of the light's power will reach it? The natural reaction is
to think "half power" - but unfortunately that's now how light works, it follows
an inverse-square law.

According to the law, the power of the light will be inversely proportional
to the square of the distance. So if we take a distance of 2 and square it,
we get 4, the inverse of which would be 1/4 or rather, a quarter of the
original power - not half.

Moving our subject 3 meters from the light (3 * 3 = 9, so 1/9) the power of our
light source now becomes 1/9th of what it originally was.

Here's how the drops in light power work from 1 to 10 meters, remember that
each one is simply the distance squared, over 1.

The inverse square law explains the dramatic drop-off in light over distance.
We can use this information to better understand how our lights are affecting
our subject and by that measure, how to control them better.
Remember that with a square law, the numbers get bigger more and more
quickly, however with an inverse square law the numbers get smaller more
and more slowly.

If we look at our light drop-off from 1 meter to 10 meters in percentages to the

nearest whole number, it would look like this:

There's a 75% drop in light from 1 meter to 2 meters, but only a 5% drop in
light from 4 meters to 10 meters.

Exposure
So we understand that there's lots of power very close to the light source, but
only a very small amount of power far away from it. On that basis, to get a
correct exposure (assuming we use a consistent shutter speed), if the subject
was very close to the light then we would need to set our aperture to around
F16, to block out all the excess light.

If, on the other hand, the subject was very far away from the light, then we'd
set our aperture to around F4 in order to let much more light in. Both
photographs should look identical because we've adjusted our camera to let in
the same amount of light for each one.
So on that basis, we can plot out a rough estimate of where all the correct F-
Stops are to get a correct exposure level. Remember that the light drops off
very fast at first, then slower. In the same way, we open up our aperture very
fast to start with, then slow down the further we get away from the light.

The light intensity, for example, quadruples (4) upon halving (1/2) the distance to the
light source and subject. Respectively, the light intensity decreases to a quarter if we
double the distance. According to this, these exemplary pairs of digits are valid
(distance: 3-fold; intensity: 1/9) and (4; 1/16) if we multiply the distance respectively.

In general, the inverse-square law explains the disproportionate light fall-off with
increasing distance of the subject to the light source. This knowledge helps us to
better understand how to correlate light and lighting with the distance to the subject
and its brightness.