Different Light Mods

I've talked about light mods a lot in this blog. Umbrella, soft boxes, ring lights...you name it I've used it and talked about how to use it. But I've never really show you how they compare to each other as far as quality of light goes. They all have different purposes and properties of light they throw.

Here's the set up. I'll be changing the strobe on the right. Right now it's got a ring flash on it.

First up, the bare flash. This is important to set a baseline. When I say bare flash, I mean my 560 with just it's built in bounce reflector on and pointed a little up. It's not a true bare, hard flash, but this is more a comparison between different soft light mods, not hard lights.  By bouncing the light around, you can turn a bare strobe into a soft light.

The light isn't that great really. It's kinda underexposed and bleh. There are some cool highlights on the backdrop, but as far as lighting the subject, not so much. I would just a strobe as a light source for lighting a room or for toning an image by bouncing it off something with color. You can easily add warm color to your subject by bouncing a strobe off a wood wall or something.

Next we have a soft box. This is the next step up from a bare flash in terms of a scale from hard light to soft light. A soft box is not usually a very big surface of light, so while the light will be softer than a bare flash, they won't be a soft as an umbrella. A soft box is very good at short range though. For close up portraits, it's hard to beat a soft box. The size of the light gets larger relative to the subject when you move the light closer. An umbrella is sometimes too large and gets rid of all shadows, so a soft box will provide a half way point between that and the hard light of a bare flash.

The soft box gives really beautiful light in this. The strong highlight on the wood is very intense, and usually you could put your subject in front of that to make sort of a halo effect. But I didn't because this is a test! So the light on the shirt is fairly soft. You can clearly see the edges of the shadow, but there's a nice fall off that's not too abrupt. On the matte of the helmet, it's fantastic. Beautiful specular highlights. The goggles got a great big reflection though, which could have been avoided by moving the light source farther up.

Now on to the umbrella. I really like umbrellas, mainly because they are really hard to screw up. They have very nice, soft light, and if you get them close, the light falls off really nice in the background. They aren't particularly hard to set up or aim either. The size of them does sometimes prove a challenge when in the wind and out doors. You can get around this by using human light stands, or weighting them down. I mainly use them for portraits, where soft light is generally preferred. With two umbrella cross lighting the sitter, you can get rid of most shadows, and make really beautiful complexions.

Comparing this with the soft box, you'll notice some changes right away. Gone are the two major highlights/reflections in the goggles and the wood background. The light is much softer and the fall off larger. The goggles look awesome, I like the little bit of reflection as it adds depth to the face. However, I don't know if I like the reflection where it is, over the lit side of the face. Your eye will go there and then bam, reflection in the way. I digress. The light from the umbrella is obviously much softer than the soft box. I the shirt,w e can hardly tell where the shadow edge is, it just sort of melts away. You may see why this big of a light source is used for portraiture a lot. The face becomes very soft and youthful with the lack of hard shadows.

Last but not least, we have the ring flash. Ring flashes were developed for medial use as a matter of fact, but more artistic photographers picked them up for use as light mods pretty fast. Again, they are used for portrait photography a lot. The right flash is placed around the lens, so light appears to come from all directions. Shadows virtually disappear. When using it off camera, it has a similar effect to a soft box of the same size.



As I just said, this looks a lot like the pic with the soft box. Same highlight in the background and very similar shadow edges. The soft box and ring light are very similar sizes, only one is a doughnut and one is a piece of bread. Obviously the doughnut will make sweeter images, giving a little more wrap around light and killing shadows a tad more. I think this is because there is no light from the middle to make the hard shadows. One side of the light fills in the shadow made by the other. I use this light as a in-between the soft box and the umbrella. It's also great as a in line fill light, as in putting the lens in the middle of the ring. You have very good control over the shadow fill this way, almost separating them from the rest of your lights. I'll do a post about that soon.

That's all for today, I hope you maybe learned a little something about light mods. This is in no way comprehensive, so there's plenty more to learn.

See you tomorrow.