Hard Light

This is continuation from my last lighting post on soft light.

Hard light is usually used for more dramatic photos. It casts hard shadows and hard highlights with very little transition zone in between. You can use multiple hard lights as cross lights to make some really cool effects, even adding in a soft light as a fill. I usually will have a soft light as a key and a hard light as a side light, sometimes even colored.


Going into some of the different hard lights you would commonly see and use. This is not comprehensive of every mod out there.

This is a bare speed light. Very wide beam, hard highlights and shadows. It's definitely more dramatic lighting than soft light from an umbrella. There's still the intense highlight in the background, just as with the soft lights. The big difference is that there is no highlight in the lens of the goggles. This is because the light source is very small and the reflection of it is not in line with the camera. With a soft light, the surface area is so big that it's reflection is almost always in view of the camera.

Note: the terms soft and hard light are relative to the size of the subject and the distance between the light and the subject. The quality of the light is derived from the surface area in relation to the subject. A light with a surface area of 10 lighting a subject with an area of 100 is going to be very hard light. That same light with a subject of 5 will have very soft light.

Next is a grid. This mod restricts the light and turns it into a circle. There is a beautiful fall off and so you get this spot light effect.

These three are light by snoots. The first photo was from a 4 inch snoot, the second a 7 inch, and the last a 12 inch. A snoot is must a tube that goes over the strobe head. As you would imagine, it focuses and restricts the light into a small area. It's very similar to the grid in practice, the only real difference being the fall off. A snoot will have a hard edge to the light, where a grid will fall off slowly as mentioned before. 

That's all for now, after mid night so I gotta post this! See you later today.