One of the biggest misconceptions photographers often have is that soft boxes produce soft light. While true most of the time, it’s not always true if a photographer doesn’t understand one of the fundamental’s of light—the smaller the light source in relation to the subject, the harsher the light.
Let’s illustrate that example using the great outdoors. If you took the top off the Sun to fill it with marbles the size of the planet Earth, it would take over a million, marble-sized Earths before you could put the top back on. Yep, the Sun is humungous, but it’s also 93-million miles away, thus on a bright sunny day, it looks like one big marble from where we stand.
The physics of light state the more
specular the light, the more harsh the light will be, or think of it as someone pointing a flashlight at you in the dark, usually you’ll see some harsh shadows on the wall behind you. Soft boxes are no different. If we took a medium Chimera Super Pro soft box, approximately 3- by 4-foot rectangular dimension and placed it twenty feet from our subject, it’s no longer a medium soft box, it in fact is a tiny soft box, or a harder light source.
Take that same medium Chimera Super Pro soft box and place it five feet from your subject and it becomes a source of light similar to a medium sized window, or a much softer, sweeter, forgiving light. This is important when working with female subjects. If your glamour model has a soft complexion, it’s not as much of an issue as if your subject has a more imperfect complexion. The key to remember when it comes to soft boxes, the larger the light source (soft box in this case) in relation to your subject, the softer the quality of the light, which in essence is like adding a layer of make-up to your subject.
It’s often said, “There’s nothing sweeter than diffused window light.” I have to agree, especially when you place your subject next to large windows. Not to worry if you can’t find a large window, just use something like the Chimera Super Pro Large Soft Box, which is approximately 4- by 6-foot in size, just like a large window. The combination of the white interior surface with the inner-baffle in place is like sweet, diffused sunlight coming through a window.
An even sweeter, more diffused light is the Chimera OctPlus 57, which comes with a 5-foot, stop-sign looking front. If you have the room, the best way to go is with the optional 2-foot extension, which makes it seven feet across the front for an even more forgiving light modifier. Not to mention, an octabank is like an umbrella with a soft box front, it wraps the soft light around the subject for a more even, more natural, but soft effect. It’s what I like to call a
fail-safe light modifier.j
Now let’s go back to the great outdoors, it too can turn into a large soft box. Remember that specular Sun on a bright, sunny day? Well replace the clear skies with a sheet of clouds, and presto, you have the front of the soft box directly above us and much closer than the sun (thousands of feet, not 93 million miles), hence why cloudy days give us softer light, often shadow-less light.
The down side to “shadow-less” light is lack of contrast, and often we want that “punch” in an image. There are several ways to accomplish this, one method is through post-production, tweaking the levels, curves, contrast, colors, or a combination of the four in Adobe Photoshop. However, if you’re the type of photographer like me who likes to get it right in the camera, you can add contrast, or a flattering punch to your image with a little fill flash. Just be careful, if it’s on-camera flash, it’s specular and harsher, so power it down so it just adds a “tad” of fill, not whole F/stops of light.
In the end, understanding one of the fundamentals of light,
the smaller the light source in relation to the subject, the harsher the light be, is the foundation for great lighting if a photographer applies that knowledge when making choices in their light modifiers and where to place the modifier in relation to the subject.
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