My top 5 favourite light modifiers
Although most flash guns produce incredibly bright light (enough to light up an entire room full of people) the size of the light is usually very small. Having a small light source will create hard light, which is not always flattering and can create very harsh and visible shadows in your photographs. You could also be in a situation where you have natural light, but it needs to be modified because it is stopping you from getting the image you want.
This is where a light modifier comes in. A light modifier is essentially something that you place in between the light and your subject. Why would you want to do this?
- You may want to soften the light, so that it is more flattering on your subject. In order to do so, you would need to increase the size of the light source. Suitable modifiers would be an umbrella or a softbox, or maybe the ceiling or a nearby wall.
- You may want to increase the area which your small light source covers. When would you do this? If you are using a wide angle lens, your flash may only illuminate the center of your photograph – you could increase the area it covers by putting on a diffuser, e.g. the Sto-Fen or a Gary Fong Lightsphere.
- You may want to decrease the area your light covers, i.e. restrict the light. Why would you ever want to do this? I find that my photographs are far more interesting if there is a bit of contrast. In other words, dark areas and light areas. You can restrict light by using a snoot (which redirects the light into a tight beam) or a grid (which only allows the light to exit through a certain angle, also creating a tight beam).
- You might want to colour your light for creative purposes or to match the ambient lights in the room.
- If you are using natural light, you may need to alter it to suit your needs. For example, if you are outdoors and you place your subject between you and the sun so that they are backlit, your subject’s face is likely to come out dark when you take the photo. You can rectify this by modifying the natural light with a reflector, held in front of the subject to reflect some of the light back into their face.
This is a pretty minimal list, but it outlines most of the situations where I find that I need to modify my light source. There are of course hundreds of other situations and reasons why you might need to modify yours, e.g. to avoid getting reflections in your pictures or something like that.
So without further delay, here’s my top 5.
[box_grey]1. For quick portraits: Lumiquest Softbox LTP[/box_grey]
I love this thing. It’s relatively small, but it folds up flat and is the same size as my laptop so it it is pretty easy to transport around. It attaches very quickly to a speedlight with velcro straps and gives you a light surface which is around 40 times larger than you would have if you were using the flash naked. It gives off a noticeably softer light that is extremely portable. An example:
I had the Softbox LTP and flash mounted on a bracket, just above my camera’s lens. You can see that the shadows are fairly soft. If I had not used the box, the lighting would have been much harsher on their faces.
[box_grey]2. For not so quick portraits: a gridded beauty dish[/box_grey]
So I had been meaning to get hold of a beauty dish for a long time, but I could never find a decent sized one to use with my speedlights. I came across this company Bessel which sells a large 48cm/19″ dish with a Bowens/S-type mount, and a suitable speedlight adapter. It also came with a grid, which restricts the light even further. That photo at the top of the page is the dish. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks and not had an opportunity to test it out on a proper shoot yet, but from playing around with it at home I’m already loving the effect it gives:
Excuse the crappy photo, it’s not going to win any awards. What you can see however is the really tight beam of light that the dish gives off, which is totally restricted by the grid. The flash is in full effect in this photo but you can’t see any evidence of it because the grid is directing it all straight at my face. I can’t wait to use this during a proper portrait session. Here’s another shot of the light the dish gives out:
[box_grey]3. For restricting light: a piece of cardboard with velcro on it[/box_grey]
If you’ve been following my blog you will have already seen that I used this trick for the afro shoot. It’s really important to be able to restrict light so that it doesn’t get into your lens, or into parts of the image that you want to stay dark.
This is simply a piece of cardboard with some velcro stuck on it, and the whole thing stuck on the side of the flash. You can see that this totally restricts the light from hitting the right side of the image. I needed to do this on the afro shoot because I didn’t want the light to get into my lens, since I was using side lighting and a wide focal length. The result of using this single flash is this:
[box_grey]4. For getting rid of awkward shadows: Orbis ring[/box_grey]
The Orbis ring is a fairly expensive modifier but it gives off a quality of light that you don’t get from anything else. Because it creates a ring of light which sits around the lens, there are no shadows on your subject’s face/body. The only shadow that you might see (if your subject is close enough to a wall) is a ring of light around them:
I don’t really like using the Orbis as a main light, because the light it gives off is too flat. A complete lack of shadows makes a photo less interesting to me. Instead, I much prefer using it as a fill flash, with the flash exposure compensation turned way down. By combining the Orbis with other lights, you can get depth and contrast but not have awkward shadows on your subject’s face:
In this photo, my main light was a large softbox to camera left. Without using the Orbis as fill, there would have been a far stronger shadow being cast by her nose. By adding the Orbis and reducing its power, the nose shadow has been brought up. You can see the other signs of the ring flash from the shadow surrounding her arm, and the central catchlight in her eyes.
[box_grey]5. For parties and events: any surface I can find[/box_grey]
So it’s not a real modifier, but it’s one of the most useful and is always available. A ceiling or wall can create some really soft light which can give directional and very flattering lighting to your scene. This really works best for events, parties and the like, where you are constantly moving around:
Here, I bounced off to camera left which gives a directional light to the girl’s face. If I had bounced off the ceiling, her eye sockets would have shadowed her eyes. So you need to be aware of the direction that you are bouncing in. Some more examples of bounced flash:
[box_grey]In summary[/box_grey]
So there you have it, these are the 5 light modifiers that I use the most (apart from the dish so far – but I’m sure I will). Of course none of this means that other light modifiers are useless, in fact I haven’t listed the two most popular modifiers which are umbrellas and softboxes.
The point is that you should only really use the modifier that helps you achieve the look that you want. Your starting point should be thinking about what sort of lighting you want in your final image – do you want it to be restricted, really bright, full body, only the face? Once you’ve decided that, picking the appropriate modifier will be easy.
