Hey, this is Daniel Norton.
I'm here in my studio in New York City
with McKenzie, and one question
I get all the time is..
What's the difference between a softbox
and an umbrella?
I mean besides the fact
that a softbox is a softbox you know
like in use. So while you can do a lot of
things with the various modifiers, kind
of the main reason why you'd use a
softbox over an umbrella, in my opinion,
is, for the control. At the edge control,
umbrellas tend to throw the light out
wide. Our softbox gives you a bit of a
narrow throw, and while you can collapse
the umbrella, and do different things, it
still doesn't give you the same kind of
control you get with the softbox.
This is a really big subject that could be
covered in many many videos, but we're
just gonna do it really basic, just kind
of show you that. So I'm gonna use this
lastolite collapsible umbrella here, and
my Profoto, a 3-foot octagon.
I do have the grid on it to start with,
because that's again one of the
advantages of things you can do with a
soft box.. but let me just start with the
umbrella, so we're
here again the pro the umbrella set with
my Profoto light, I'm here in my studio,
I'm going to set my camera at f/11 @250,
and I'm going to turn the flash off, the
reason why I'm at that setting is
because that will get rid of the ambient
light in the space, and I'm gonna take a
quick shot here.
I'm in Capture One, just to make sure and
yeah got a black screen!
That means with none of the light are
affecting us, so all you're seeing is the
results of the umbrella.
I'm gonna start in TTL and we'll see what
we get here for a shot, there we go right... kind of
classic umbrella shot.
45-degree angle
you know nice nice coverage,
the background has light on it.
It's soft because it's big, and that's kind of your
umbrella shot now.
I could spin the umbrella, if I want to try to get less
light on the background, let's say
as you can see the light on her changed
actually a little bit.
Nicer on her, because of the shadow
pattern but the background is still
essentially the same,
you've got white floors in here, you've
got the sunbrella bouncing around, lights
going everywhere, it's just filling in
it's actually really great, this is my
choice, when I want something where
someone's gonna move around a lot, or
when somebody is like, you're in a group,
like umbrella is key for that.
I love umbrellas for that, but when you switch
to a softbox what you're going to get is
again the ability to control your space
a little bit better. So this over here
again this is a three-foot octagon, it
has a grid on it.
The grids gonna narrow the throw, we'll start there.
You can't really put a grid on a umbrella,
so this is one of the things you can do,
and you notice - like we're closing this
up here!
That means all light, all our lights
going to be kind of pushed through the
front of the softbox.
So you're actually not wasting light either ,
wasn't that a, album?
Wasting light, is that it.. yeah, I think it
is. Will somebody look that up?
Right so we switch there, all right, so we
can already see with the, with the
softbox and the grid the background,
actually more comparative will be this
one. Because the lights in the same
situation right? So we can immediately
see. Also you notice the color change a
little bit with the umbrella?
The, the lights bouncing around studio,
picking up some of the more cool tones in the
studio, the softbox is keeping this like
warm fresh light. So that's also, I mean
you can white balance that, but that's a
little bit of a difference you get.
you notice the background is darker, even
though the lights in the same spot. But I
can now remember when I turn the
umbrella, I didn't really do that much,
when I turn the softbox. We should
be able to scoop a lot of the light, off the
background, getting it almost completely
dark, you know! And if you moved it closer
and things, you'd be able to get it even
more dark, but that's with the grid right?
That's like your softbox deluxe right?
That's what they call like, when you get
fries what they do whatever, and tomato
right? You get tomato as well, they don't
just get fries.
Yeah supreme...
so we're gonna pull the grid off.
If you want to actually be a cool photographer
you're supposed to leave it hanging here,
like don't put it away, just leave it
there, that's like what cool
photographers do.
Okay I'll take it off...
because I'm not very cool...
all right so, we put that back more or less
where it was again.
I'm going to start with it more
pointed directly at her, and there we go,
so now this is with and without grid... all
right, so the grid gave us a little more
contrast, a little bit more control and..
but we can still feather the softbox off,
here let's get that variation, you know
again. So we can actually see that when
we turn the softbox away from her, we
actually kind of we have almost a little
bit more of even coverag, in the
background, because now it's feathered
off. When the softbox is pointed directly
at her we get like a little more shadowy
and that's kind of the opposite of the
umbrella in a lot of ways. So you know
you're definitely very different tools.
I mean if you took the softbox you could
get a similar look to the umbrella right
here.
I mean the color is a little different
but with the umbrella you're not gonna
be able to get that, so that's basically
it right?Not without a lot of work,
anyways this is basically softbox right?
Out of the box, this is softbox out of the box...
this is basically how soft boxes work, so
decide to move in for the closure... exactly
so sheesh,... so there's a lot to
be said about soft boxes.
I can do an entire video on soft boxes if you want
to see more stuff that you can do with
it, but in general softbox... edge control!
Right. Umbrella spreads the light.. so yeah
price difference is all kinds of things,
but really that's why you're gonna
choose one over the other, and you can do
a lot of stuff with an umbrella you can
do a lot up with a softbox, but having
multiple tools is going to give you a
lot more kind of freedom to create what
you really want to do.
So I will put Mackenzie's information in the
description so you can follow her on
social medias.
Follow me @DanielNortonphotographer
and I'll see you next time
Onset.