Large softbox, small softbox, umbrella or beauty disc? When choosing a key lighting tool for your portraits, it can be difficult to decide which is best for the job. I’ve been working as a portrait photographer for 19 years, so in this article I’ll introduce you to the modifiers I use most often when taking photos and explain what they do. of each tool as well as the best situations in which to use them.
Select the main dimmer
When choosing your primary lighting modifier, there are a few factors you need to keep in mind to make your decision. Do you want soft or hard light? Minimal and muted shadows or harsh and edgy? How much key light do you want to shine on your background? What type of lighting will best highlight your subject’s face? Have answers to these questions ready before you apply modifiers to your lights, and while shooting, make sure that the modifier you choose is helping you achieve your goals for the photo.
Soft case 24 x 36″
Let’s start right away with the main lighting modifier I use most often: my Soft case 24″ x 36″. It is portable, fits most faces, and is easily moved around the subject to vary the quantity and quality of shadows.
It projects a minimal amount of light onto the background, depending on the subject’s distance from the background, and if you add a grid to the softbox, it focuses the light into a tighter field and minimizes spillage. into the background or elsewhere. You can see here that I was still able to create some depth with the shadows while keeping the lighting on the face soft and showing off the beauty. In this photo, the key light is placed just to the right of the camera, and placing it more towards the front or right of the camera fills in those shadows on the side of my face.
I use this most for close-up and portrait photography in the studio and on location because of its versatility in creating images that feel light and airy or dark and moody, depending on its location. Here’s the same softbox, but centered directly in front of the object and with a white reflection underneath:
Octabox 60″
The general rule is that the larger the dimmer, the wider its light spread. And compare the 24 x 36″ softbox to 8 boxes of 60″ With twice the size, you can immediately see that the light travels further.
The octabox is placed as far to the side as the smaller softbox (right on the other side of my face), but it casts more shadows on the side of my face, away from the light. It also extends down my body and lights up more of my arms and spills out more of the background.
I use the 60″ octabox mostly in the studio and less on location, unless I know the location will have enough room and the ceiling is high enough that I can move it where I want it. It works best when you’re shooting more than just someone’s face and need the light to hit their body for a waist-up, knee-up, or full-body portrait. And just like the smaller softbox, you can also have one mesh to cover it better to control spillage if you want to keep more light in the background.
22″ Silver Beauty Plate
Now let’s go in the opposite direction and choose something smaller and more extreme. This is a 22″ tall output. silver beauty dish no diffusion:
The light is narrower and harsher, and the shadows are sharper, which means I have to try multiple poses to find the right angle so it hits my face without the shadows overwhelming me and making me look ghostly. The light emitted from the silver beauty dish will find every wrinkle, blemish and blemish so I had to retouch this photo to the sky to avoid hate. I don’t use this option for headshots and portraits of anyone over 25 who doesn’t have perfect skin, because you’ll get more photos with unflattering angles until you get it right. suitable photo. That really narrows its application to high-fashion beauty portraits and macro close-ups like this one:
22″ silver beauty dish with diffuser
Adding a single diffuser sock on top of the silver beauty dish will soften and disperse the light to spread it slightly beyond the dish’s narrow beam. The light hitting the skin becomes softer and more in line with the quality of light coming from a 24×36″ softbox, but because it’s a smaller modifier, we still get sharper lines at the edges of shadows .This makes it great for enhancing skin portraits where you want a bit of drama with sharp definition in the cheekbones and jawline to make them look strong and prominent.
22″ White Beauty Plate
Can you tell the difference between a 22″ silver beauty dish with diffuser and a diffuser disc? 22″ White Beauty Plate? Yes, me too. It’s subtle so they both basically have the same effect. The white beauty dish is more popular than silver in most headshots and portraits because it provides a classic beauty look that gets its name from the effect of gorgeous old Hollywood portraits of stars. movie stars from the 1930s with just one type of light and no other modifiers.
22″ white beauty disc with dual diffuser
Since the single diffusion layer did a magic trick with the silver beauty disc and made it as soft as a softbox, let’s see what the two diffusion layers do with the white beauty disc:
Adding strong diffusion to a white beauty dish enhances the spread of light onto the background and into the nooks and crannies of shadows to still maintain many shadows but soften their edges. Light now both sculpts the shape of a person’s face and fills in some of the smaller lines and wrinkles. It also gives the skin a glowy effect, which is great if that’s what you’re looking for, but can look a bit fake or a bit like a classic glamor photo.
Small see-through umbrella 24″
Let’s slow down for a minute but instead of using a diffused beauty dish, where the light bounces off a metal disc behind the strobe and then shoots through a layer of diffuser, let’s shine the light of we go directly through diffusion without a backside. This is a small one see-through umbrella:
Ok, there’s a lot to unpack here. Ignore the change in color temperature on this one, although it’s something you need to pay attention to when going through any diffusion layer with a modifier as not all diffusion fabrics are the same and I have had many umbrellas, softboxes, and diffusers that change color over time to become cooler or warmer as their color fades.
The shadows on my face were quite harsh and the light wasn’t too soft, but it also spilled quite a bit into the background when compared to a beauty dish of the same size that has more control over where the light goes.
A small, see-through umbrella mimics the lighting of a bright sunny day, where the sun is far enough away to illuminate everything while casting harsh shadows behind the subject. It can work well for green screen shots where your subject needs to look like it was shot outdoors in the sun. See your highlights using this option: you don’t have much variation between shadows and highlights, so you can easily blow out your highlights with a pass-through umbrella .
51″ parabolic dimmer or PLM cell
ONE PLM combines some of the features of all the previous modifiers and is quite similar in appearance to the 60″ octabox. I tend to use this PLM when shooting location portraits where I know I will need to project illuminating more of a person’s entire body with light that mimics window light or generally resembles natural light It works well in place for this purpose because it is more portable than an octabox large and can be lighter and easier to maneuver However, the thing to note is that the larger the regulator the higher the ceiling you need. This is so you can get to the regulator’s sweet spot high enough to illuminate a person’s face in the most flattering way without the light looking like it’s coming from too low.
86″ parabolic dimmer or PLM cell
If you have a studio space large enough to slay this monster, here’s what you’ll get:
The PLM 86″ ideal for mimicking the look of diffused natural light through a window, where the light gently falls on the subject from head to toe while also spilling dramatically onto the background. However, it’s 7 feet wide, so if you have a standard 9-foot ceiling, your subject has to sit on a fairly low chair to get the center of light at least a foot above their face.
Which key lighting modifier is best?
The best key lighting tool for portraits depends on the portrait. If you want more drama and more shine, choose something smaller like a beauty dish or small umbrella. If you want softer, fuller light that mimics beautiful light from a window, go with a large lamp or go home with a large octabox lamp or large PLM.
Always experiment as every modifier has strengths and weaknesses for what you are trying to achieve. Your job as a portrait photographer is to shape the light and shadow, and just like a carpenter has different tools to build a house, we have different tools to make every people look better in front of the camera.
