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I Love Umbrellas, Am I A Talentless Faker?

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SmilerGrogan

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I have used all different brands of soft boxes and accompanying scrims and screens as well as 4x4 silks, the Dean Collins Light Box, and bounce boards but I always come back to using white shoot-through umbrellas. For me they provide the exact kind of falloff over the subject that I prefer.

Am I missing something? To me softbox light just looks fake while umbrella light looks far more organic and believable.

Is there something wrong with me?

Thanks
 
I don't see a problem. You know the look you like and you've found a way to get it. And sounds like you've tried plenty of alternatives.

Don't believe everything you see on the internet.

Gato
 
SmilerGrogan said:
Is there something wrong with me?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Yes, there is. You haven't drunk enough Kool-Aid.

I always like this quote attributed to Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000841/) :
"If you learn to light with only diffused light you can light everything. If you learn to use hard light, you can light anything."

--
Ellis Vener
To see my work, please visit http://www.ellisvener.com
I am on Instagram @EllisVenerStudio
If you like my question or response, please give a thumbs up. My ego needs the strokes.
 
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SmilerGrogan said:
I have used all different brands of soft boxes and accompanying scrims and screens as well as 4x4 silks, the Dean Collins Light Box, and bounce boards but I always come back to using white shoot-through umbrellas. For me they provide the exact kind of falloff over the subject that I prefer.

Am I missing something? To me softbox light just looks fake while umbrella light looks far more organic and believable.

Is there something wrong with me?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Well modifiers are a tool so there are going to be times where one modifier is better suited than another. However, regardless if they are a tool, you can always have a preference.

I think umbrellas (in general) get a bad rep. I feel a lot of people start out with them because they are normally on the cheaper end of modifiers and think they suck because they don't like the results. In reality, it's not the umbrella that sucks, it's them.

These people then get a softbox, spend more time improving and they like the result better. In reality, it's not the softbox but them that has improved.

This then comes full circle when they realise gear is just gear.
 
I've been shooting studio as a passionate amateur for a couple of decades now, and I return to umbrellas time and time again.

Softboxes and etc can be convenient but don't in many cases fundamentally offer anything an umbrella can't. Plus, umbrellas (at least compared to most soft boxes) travel a lot easier.

Also it's hard to beat how close you can get a shoot-through umbrella for when you really want that soft, wraparound light. Yes you get a ton of spill, and yes that's a feature when you're working quickly with a single light.

And they tend to be cheap. What's not to like? Ironically, I suspect it's a bit of a snob factor that leads to some ignoring them, nothing more.
 
SmilerGrogan said:
I have used all different brands of soft boxes and accompanying scrims and screens as well as 4x4 silks, the Dean Collins Light Box, and bounce boards but I always come back to using white shoot-through umbrellas. For me they provide the exact kind of falloff over the subject that I prefer.

Am I missing something? To me softbox light just looks fake while umbrella light looks far more organic and believable.

Is there something wrong with me?

Thanks
Click to expand...
Nothing wrong with you. You like, what you like.

Shoot through umbrellas will spread light all around, including backwards. If you are in a small or medium sized room with light colored walls, the light going backwards will hit the walls and provide bounced fill. So, what you get from a white shoot through umbrella, is very soft forgiving light that looks like ambient because of the addition of bounced light. In your words, "organic and believable".

To get similar more organic looking light with other modifiers, use a very large modifier or bounce light off the walls for fill, or try adjusting your cameras shutter and iso to expose for the ambient. Then use your flash as fill lighting on your subject. Gel the light to be close to the ambient color as needed.

--
https://www.ronchauphoto.com/
https://www.instagram.com/rchau.photo
 
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ronscuba said:
To get similar more organic looking light with other modifiers, use a very large modifier or bounce light off the walls for fill, or try adjusting your cameras shutter and iso to expose for the ambient. Then use your flash as fill lighting on your subject. Gel the light to be close to the ambient color as needed.
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I'll add that the dead giveaway that your lights aren't color balanced to each other is that your shadows will show a color shift.
 
And then there's me, a subscriber to the "warm light, cool shadows" line of thinking, who intentionally cools his shadows.
 
Travis Burnside said:
And then there's me, a subscriber to the "warm light, cool shadows" line of thinking, who intentionally cools his shadows.
Click to expand...
Hi Travis, I'd love to see a sample of that, are you talking about artificial light or available?

I am starting to use gels and I can't get past 1985! haha
 
john g said:
Travis Burnside said:
And then there's me, a subscriber to the "warm light, cool shadows" line of thinking, who intentionally cools his shadows.
Click to expand...
Hi Travis, I'd love to see a sample of that, are you talking about artificial light or available?

I am starting to use gels and I can't get past 1985! haha
Click to expand...
I'm talking about artificial light. With sunlight, you'll notice that while highlights are warm, shadows often have a blue cast. This is the look I want to duplicate for studio shots, as for some things it can look a touch more pleasing.

You can do it with a slight blue gel on your fill light. These days, Lightroom makes it one-click easy to cool shadows a bit, so I cheat and do it that way. :)

Here's an example of the look I use (and not always, but sometimes)... it's subtle.



25382d9db8594d6cbd6a3b00a887a95e.jpg
 
And with the masking tools in Lightroom, we can decide which shadows you want to cool. This also possible with ACR and ACR as a filter (preferably applied as a smart object layer) in Photoshop.
I guess if other image processing programs let you do it in them too but I don’t know those programs.
 
john g said:
Travis Burnside said:
And then there's me, a subscriber to the "warm light, cool shadows" line of thinking, who intentionally cools his shadows.
Click to expand...
Hi Travis, I'd love to see a sample of that, are you talking about artificial light or available?

I am starting to use gels and I can't get past 1985! haha
Click to expand...
With natural or ambient light you can’t control if you use a bi- or RGB type LED light as a fill source you can adjust the color of the fill.

these days I am using a Datacolor LightColor Meter to balance different light sources to each other or deliberately set complementary or contrasting colors. While the LCM isn’t strictly necessary it does make exact control and repeatability possible. There are other colorimeters and even the mighty Sekonic C800U spectrometers but the Datacolor product is reasonably priced (reasonable if you value this sort of thing) and works well for photo and video work. https://www.datacolor.com/spyder/products/lightcolor-meter
 
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