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Camera Bags – They Are Always Too Small
Quick Lighting Tip – Why My Softbox Looks Different Than Yours
Yep every once in a while I write a post about photographic lighting. I only do this when I stumble across something that I think my answer a lot of questions really quickly. I much prefer the “hands on approach” that I use in workshops that I do every once in a while. I prefer this because you can learn more in 5 minutes actually relating to the distances/spaces/angles in person than you can in a lifetime of looking at diagrams and descriptions and resulting images. I guess video is a little better but nothing like being there.
Okay – I had a reader write me about an image posted somewhere in an Aperture article. Actually it was a series of images that happened to be in a screen shot of an Aperture screen from way way back. The question was not about Aperture at all, it was quite literally “why does your softbox look different than mine?”. After a long email exchange – that answer came down to distance and fill light. I thought boiling that discussion down maybe useful to some of you that are have started to take your flash off the top of your camera. I randomly picked an image from the sequence that we discussed that happened to use a couple of the things that we talked about. It’s a JPG strait out of the camera – my usual M.O. when doing workshops.
When working with any light and especially a softbox or something similar the main goal is getting a bigger light source. If you make the light bigger but have it really far away it doesn’t accomplish much. You want to get it close – really close. Just about everyone knows this – well not everyone, in fact most people’s issue is that their definition of close is really not that close. At some point when you reinvent your definition of close the results are still not what you “expect”. Why is this? Well if you happen to have a really really really gigantic light source and you are taking a picture of something really really small one light really really close may work extremely well. In most cases the biggest things you are going to use practically are a 3×4 or 4×6 box or smaller on normal sized things like people.
Getting a light source close does two things simultaneously, the first and usual goal is to make it “softer” or in other words make it bigger in relation to your subject. The second thing that it does that is usually unintended, at least to the lighting newbie, is that it makes everything else darker – your background – your reflected fill light – everything. In a way this makes it harder at the same time. Most people’s definition of “soft” when it comes to lighting visuals is a gradual shadow transition AND a somewhat close ratio between fill and main lights – sort of – you do not usually want it really “flat” – soft but not flat. Soft = good, flat = bad. At least my taste. The effect of moving your box closer and closer in a lot of cases can be counter productive to what you are trying to do. In summary you want it close but not too close, in most cases you want it closer than it is without causing everything else to get dark and the lighting ratio to increase too much.
What to do? Well you could add a fill light but that is for wimps and usually is not the best solution, not that adding a light is bad but most of the time it makes things more complicated and can lead to FLAT. It also chucks another catch light in the eyes (not good) – this is not the case if your fill is really really really really big but that takes a lot of work and space – usually not a reality for most location shots.
Wait we can use reflectors – yea that’s it. The problem with reflectors is as you get your softbox closer and closer the reflected light becomes darker to the point of pretty much useless if you want your box really close. most people solve this by placing the reflector as close as possible and then adjusting the distance of the softbox distance until they get the ratio they want. I am going to offer you a better way right now and the one most of my workshop participants are shocked at when they see the way I setup my lights.
Here is the big secret that works really well with softboxes and reflected fill – get your box really close and point it away from the subject towards the fill. Not all the way away of course but more away than flat on your subject. In most cases your softbox can be pointed so that the front is almost perpendicular to your subject plane. Doing this does a lot of things without changing the overall characteristic of the light. It changes the way specular highlights are rendered in some very interesting ways that you probably do not expect – in a lot of cases for the better. It increases the effectiveness of your reflected fill – be it from your environment or reflectors that you placed yourself. It can cut the light out of one side of the picture or reduce it. The real magic is that you can adjust how much of these things happen or don’t happen by simply twisting the way your box is pointed a little this way or a little that way.
So the image at the top – A reasonable sized room but not gigantic and to be blunt a little close for my taste. To camera right I have a 3×4 box really really close in front of the subject and a little to the right. Just out of frame. maybe 20 degrees to the right and in front. About 2 1/2 – 3 feet away. Really. It is pointed way more to the left than at the subject. On the left I have some very large white reflectors that run from in front to behind the subject. The walls would have done to but would have polluted the color a bit since they have an odd green-ness to the off-white. There is one other light – it is very far behind the subject on the left side. A 1×3 softbox that I have twisted, angled, and positioned in such a way that it is providing light on the background that is about 1 and 1/2 stops less than the main while providing a subtle rim light for separation on the left that is about 2/3 stops less than the main. That light has nothing to do with fill. In fact if you have two lights the last thing that I would use the second light for is fill unless you are going for flat.
Here is another with the same concept – box is a little to the left and in front of the subject
maybe 10-15 degrees off axis of where I am standing about 2 1/2-3 feet from the subject but it is pointed more up than right down at the subject. There is another light for the background and very very subtle rim light but it is angled so far behind the subject that it has nothing to do with the fill – you can see it where the light actually starts to go into black and then get’s lighter again.
RB
Ps. If you want more lighting stuff let me know, the only thing I have to go on if feedback from readers.
Very good and very true.
I was once told quite sternly “only amatures aim lights at things”
Michael,
Would love to hear who and the circumstances surrounding that conversation. I am sure we would all find it educational.
RB
Well, since you have asked, his name was Scavullo (yes, that one). I was not much more than a messenger, but our studio was doing a small product shot for insertion into the editorial spread which, along with the cover were being shot by Scavullo. I was delivering prints I had just made to the AD who was with Scavullo doing the cover.
I arrived during a break in the action and was brought back into the studio and told to wait while they looked at the print to make sure it was what they wanted.
While I waited I tried to memorize the setup 8×10 deardorff not terribly far from the spike tape on the floor. I didn’t see any lights. All of a sudden I realized that he was standing right behind me. He knew exactly what I was thinking. Before I could say hello he said “Well. how would YOU light her ? (now not having a clue, and always willing to say anything to anyone ) I said “Well certainly not like THAT………which explains why you are Scavullo, and I am Perini”
He got quite a kick out of that and said” look” he pulled back a huge muslin curtain to reveal 2 Ascor sunlight units 6400 watt/seconds each which were aimed not at the muslin but at the white brick wall behind the muslin.
His wall of light was easily14 feet high and 16 to 20 feet deep.
This “Soft Box” was perhaps 4 feet from the camera subject axis and parallel to it. It extended far behind the model and behind the camera.
He said” I learned this from Horst, only amatures aim lights at things” He told me to get myself a cheap bed sheet (thin, low thread count)
This entire encounter lasted perhaps 3 minutes, but I never forgot Soft was about size and proximity, and that soft was very different from flat.
I realize that he was exaggerating a bit for my benefit because he also used umbrellas. But I got the point (and the Bedsheet)
I was struck by his generosity, which was also at the essence of his photography—every one and every thing that came before his lens was rendered more beautiful than reality.
Amazing story Michael. I learned this through the school of hard knocks and bloody noses. You may have heard of that place often referred to as HKBN U
RB
RB
Astronomers measure the size of objects in Angular diameter as seen from earth, which provides a great deal of information about the relative size of celestial objects and when combined with their distence, their actual size can be calculated. It is a fairly simple concept that should be applied to lighting. It makes it easy to grasp that no matter how big an object (or light source) is, if it is far enough away it becomes a point source.
The light source described above probably had an angular diameter of 160 degrees as measured from the models position.
People buy 3′ umbrellas or 18″ square “EZ Boxes” and place them 6 feet away from a subject and wonder why the promised soft light looks hard.
What’s more the instructions that come with these things always show them pointed at the subject rather than feathered.
The reflectors he used were EACH two full sheets of 4×8′ plywood hinged in the center with wheels on the bottom. They could easily be formed into corners a la Penn.
All for a model who probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds, but LOOKED like a million bucks.
Just think how happy he would have been to find out that he could dispense with all that big stuff because STOFEN had invented the little Tupperware thingy that gives you soft light for 10 bucks.
Michael,
Who said there is one born every minute or something…
That is why the lure of selling A.A. lightroom presets is so great. Everyone wants a simple easy solution and are willing to pay for it even if it doesn’t work. That is why there is so much crap out there – it is easier to sell a simple cheap product that doesn’t actually do anything than a complicated product that does.
RB
Ps.
One correction – the stofen thing recreates a bare bulb not a directional large source. Boy didn’t I get that right – soft means two things fill ratio and shadow transition. The problem is I really really like to control my fill so that my shadow transitions gradate to exactly the value that I like – I don’t know where I developed a taste for that but nothing floats my boat more than a long gradual gradation into really dark but not to dark to see the color.
RB
You are sadly and exactly correct.
Many of us are becoming irretrieveably lazy.
We are finding ever better ways to rationalize our artistic slovenlyness.
This site is becoming somewhat of an artistic compass. You are out there with your 8×10 as well as digital capture.
I am one of the lazy ones, I have complete Deardorff outfits up through 11×14 and ideas for projects that would benefit from the analog domain but they remain ladies in waiting.
I have not told that Scavullo story in 30 years and find it at least a bit unsettling, because I have not done enough with the gift I was given.
For readers who are not familliar with his work and think this thread may be the largely hyperbolic musings of a photographic fogey, have a look at Scavullo.com and click on Commissioned Portraits —these are people who paid their own money to stand in front of his lens. These are not assignments, or personal work, these are largely people who could have stood before anyone, but chose Scavullo.
Thanks RB for the food for some unsettling thought.
And yes, I know the stofen thingy is a bare bulb simulator and a fairly good one, But do you know what percentage of users use it as a bare bulb simulator and how many think they have a soft light, and point the flash forward?
You are correct though it was not the best example I could have used for the misunderstanding of what makes light soft.
Michael,
I have been “out there” with the 8×10 only recently in the last several months because I bitched myself into it. Because I have it. I sort of know what I am doing with it and I really do prefer the way film looks in a lot of the things that I happen to feel like taking photographs of. I am beating myself up because I have not used the materials and equipment that I love for far too long, for no good reason other than laziness.
I have decided that the effort involved in getting off my ass is far easier than dealing with the way I feel now for not doing it for so long. Even if I only make one decent negative in a month at least I will have done that rather than feeling even worse about it five years from now.
RB