White shoot-through umbrellas…
…and other light modifiers.
This post is pretty long as it seemed to grow legs of it’s own and get bigger and bigger as I wrote it, so grab yourself a coffee or your preferred choice of alcoholic beverage and sit down and relax for a while…
I’ve been getting quite a lot of hits on this-here blog from search terms that refer to umbrellas or white umbrellas or shoot-through umbrellas or combinations of the above.
So, if the whole idea of using umbrellas is confusing you, I’ll try and give you the idiot’s guide to using them (the idiot being the person giving the guide, not you) and in the process try and cover as many of the queries as I can.
Our cousins across the water may need to substitute “flash” for “strobe” from here-on as that’s the term they generally use for a hot-shoe flash.
First up I need to explain that if your camera has one of those green-spot settings – otherwise known as “use this setting and let’s all hope the camera will work out WTF I’m shooting and give me incredible images” – then I probably can’t help you, because you need to start taking control.
Similarly if you are using flash in ETTL mode (that’s the Canon term, not sure about Nikon or others) or automatic flash control, some of this stuff won’t work either. From what I can gather, the Nikon auto-flash seems better than the Canon, but I’m not changing brands now, and I rarely use auto-flash anyway. That’s just me, old fashioned. OK just old.
Using flash, whether it’s the hot-shoe type or the bigger studio type, is all about you controlling the light you want for your subject, rather than letting the light control you. When I use lights everything is in manual mode. The camera’s exposure, and the flash output, but not usually the camera focus, although I do revert to that on occasion.
An umbrella is just a light modifier and the circumstances in which you use light modifiers are so varied and diverse that it’s more than I can cover in a single post, I’d need to write a book *ding – lightbulb moment*.
There are however some generalisations. Mostly there’s hard light and soft light (and you use modifiers to get the “soft” bit). Then there’s directional modifiers, basically converging or concentrating, and the opposite of diverging or spreading.
Umbrellas generally fall into the spreading and softening category, although it’s not always as simple as that. There are shoot-through umbrellas (usually white), and reflective umbrellas (usually white, silver or gold). My preference is white shoot-through, for a couple of reasons:
Haven’t written so much for a long time without throwing in some images, so here goes:
This is a reflective silver umbrella. It’s a very small one, for head-shots or half-length portraits:
and with the flash firing:
Same thing, but the gold version:
and with the flash firing:
White shoot-through umbrella opened ready for action:
and with the flash firing:
There are also many other light modifiers of course. The ones I use are a couple of different soft-boxes, one a tiny Lumiquest mini soft-box that fits on a 580EX flash, and a 60cm (2ft) Ezybox soft-box that fits into the front pocket of my gear roller-bag. Bigger is nearly always better, but not when you always work on location and are 99% of the time on your own without an assistant. I also (occasionally) use a snoot, which is a cone-like device to really concentrate the light into a small area, often used by glamour or fashion photographers behind and to the side of a subject, just to light the hair. Not what I use it for!
Here’s a few examples of different light modifying…
First up, outside, no light modifier:
Outside with a 60cm soft-box:
and outside with 2 white shoot-through umbrellas:
Moving inside, shot with a mini beauty dish (hard light):
Inside with a softbox (soft but quite concentrated light):
and inside with 2 white shoot-through umbrellas (softened light and sprayed everywhere!):
and again:
No I haven’t suddenly started doing family portraits, that was shot for the Money section of a Sunday newspaper!
I mentioned a snoot earlier, this is one that’s designed for small flash instead of studio lights:
and can be fitted with a grid to concentrate light even more:
Here’s an example of an image shot with a snoot:
and one shot with a snoot fitted with a grid:
So back to the original “hit list” of search terms by which people came to my blog, and some answers:
Same as any other time you use a flash off-camera, something needs to tell it to fire, whether that’s a radio signal, like Pocket Wizards or Radio Poppers, a cable, or using the master-slave sytem that’s built-in to most Canon and Nikon flashes
Anything you want really if shooting ETTL and aperture priority or manual. Restricted by the highest available camera sync-speed if shooting flash in manual mode. It’s the combination of flash & camera setting that’s important.
Yep, they make ‘em, proved that above. Try goggling Elinchrom, Broncolour, Lumiquest, Portaflash blah blah.
Physically or power? For mounting you’ll need a flash bracket with umbrella opening. Power, for me it’s manual, manual, or manual (but you can use TTL if you want).
Should just about have covered that above somewhere.
Depends on what you are trying to achieve, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, whether your subject is male or female. Depends on how near or far the light to subject distance is, blah blah. For a very simple portrait of one person, try the umbrella 25-30 degrees to one side of your shooting position and 15-20 degrees higher. Move it further back to soften the shadow that will be produced on the face when the light hits the subject’s nose (and especially for a female subject!). Experiment..
Probably the smallest you’ll find is 60cm (2ft)
Before and after what? Without any lighting at all, or with bare flash versus umbrella? I don’t generally keep misfires so can’t show the difference of an umbrella lit subject versus natural light. In general though, direct flash is harsh and very unflattering, an umbrella will soften and spread the light and a soft-box will soften more but won’t spread the light around so much.
Ignoring the typo, I can’t think why you would. Softer than soft light? Throw a white bed-sheet over a soft-box.
For keeping the rain off? No seriously, you can get them. It’s a two-layer umbrella which you can use in reflective mode, or take off the outer skin and use as shoot-through.
You can, but it’s a little dodgy. Umbrellas catch the tiniest bit of breeze and will take off down the road without an assistant or something weighing down the light-stand. Then if there is more than the tiniest breeze they are so delicate that they will invert or just break. You need a soft-box or an Octabox (and probably an assistant).
TTFN
