Carlo Nicora (Wedding and Honeymoon)'s photostream  

Hard Light, Soft Light and the Misconception of the Magical Diffusers...

When I decided to understand lighting I watched many videos online, trying to get every bit of information possible. Later I would have tried to apply every lessons in practice, but one thing that hit me was a big misconception when learning lighting with small hot shoe flashes: the hardness and softness of light. Let me clarify it for those who are not familiar with it: the softness of the light is determined by the dimension of the light perceived by the subject; the bigger the light source appear, the softer the light will be. The softer the light, the less defined the shadows will be, the gentler the features of your subject will appear.
We are talking about how big the light appears. I would like to underline two keywords here: Big and Appear. To fully understand this take a piece of paper, an A4 sheet for example, and hang it on a wall so you can see its surface. Now walk few meters away. The sheet of paper looks of certain dimension, right? Now, without losing eye contact with the piece of paper hanged on the wall, walk towards it and stop when the paper is just one meter from you. How big the sheet of paper seems to be in comparison with everything else? It seems bigger right? Now move even closer, until the same sheet of paper is few inches from your face. How big the same A4 appears to your eyes from there? Isn't it huge? Now imagine to have an A2 (4 times bigger bigger) piece of paper. It is bigger, but still when you move closer it seems bigger than when you are far away.
So, as you can see the perception of the size of an object depends upon its real size and upon the distance from it. (From a plane a truck seems almost a toy, but at a close distance you would not play with it, right?)
Now you need to understand that these two "variables" (size of the source of light and distance from the subject) are easily manageable. You can make the light physically bigger using an umbrella or a softbox or you can make your subject perceive the light bigger simply moving that softbox inches from their eyes.
In this image I have decided to keep the light small. I wanted to have a very strong light to create a well defined shadow on the background. I wanted a strong contrast between the light and the dark. So I wanted the subject to perceive the light as small and so I hide a small hot shoe flash in front of her without any light modifier (softbox, umbrella, etc...).

Small light source = hard light = strong, well defined shadows

Now the misconception: light diffuser. I have seen so many photographer using those small simil-tupperware piece of white plastic in front of their hot shoe flash. They think that using those magical plasticky things their subject will be lit by a gentle diffused light. WRONG. This is a misconception. Think about it: does that little piece of plastic modify the perceived size of the light? No!
So what those diffusers do? They simply divert the light coming from your hot shoe flash. The light is sent not only forward, but part of it is "diffused" to the top, right, bottom and left of the flash. Instead of having a direct beam of light, the diffuser helps in sending the light all over around you. Does this makes the light softer? NO! Can this be used in certain situation to attenuate the hardness of the light coming out from a small hot shoe flash? Yes. Imagine to be in a room with white walls. Without using those diffusers the light is a beam that hits your subject directly. The source of the light is very small, so the shadows will be hard. But imagine to have one of those diffusers on your flash, a diffuser that spills a little bit of light all over. Well, some of that light spilled all over will be reflected by the walls and ceiling, and they will become huge light sources. The idea is that the direct light can be "softened" by the light coming from the reflection of the spilled light on the walls. Obviously the reflected light will not be as powerful as the main beam that is causing the well defined shadows.
Summarizing you can say that in some environment the use of those small diffusers on your hot shoe flash might help a little.

So why people are using the diffuser when they take photos outside. Where do they think the light will bounce? In the stars?
MISCONCEPTION: a diffuser will not make the light softer. In certain circumstances will ease the light, but just a little.

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Uploaded on Jul 7, 2009

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