- Hey guys, in today's video
we're going to be talking about
the difference between soft
and hard light.
So what's the difference
between hard light and soft light?
Now the key distinction
is in the shadows.
And if you'd go out
and you're out and about
in the full sun
and you look down at your shadow,
you're going to notice
that you have a very harsh defined shadow.
This is because the sun
is a hard light source.
But then what happens
when a cloud comes over?
It creates a nice diffused
soft light source.
And what happens to your shadow?
It dithers away,
the edges become a lot more gradual,
they're less defined.
And if it's a really cloudy day
you may not be able to even see
where your shadow is at all.
It's so diffused.
So this is the same principle
that we will apply to our lighting.
Soft lighting is beautiful
and it's definitely a technique
that you want to be adding
to your toolkit.
Now, why is soft lighting something
that you should pay attention to.
Well, it all comes down to blemishes
and what it does to the face.
If you grab out a light out
of your light kit
most of the times if you just
point it at somebody
it's going to be a hard light source.
And what happens when you point
a hard light source at someone?
You're gonna get sharp, defined shadows
and there's going to be a tendency
to highlight blemishes, pimples, wrinkles
and things like that.
Things that we would typically try and hide.
Now, there are two main ways
that you can soften a light source.
The first is called diffusion
and the second is called bouncing.
Okay, let's jump into diffusion.
Now, of the attachments and the accessories
that I'm gonna share with you today.
They all achieve three key things.
The first thing is
they make the light source bigger
and the larger the light source
the softer it will become.
The second thing is density,
the more layers of diffusion
that light has to pass through
the softer it will become.
The third factor is distance.
Once you have that large beautiful
creamy light source,
you wanna bring it in as close as possible.
The closer it is to the subject
the more those shadows are just going
to melt away,
the light will wrap around the face
and you'll get that beautiful,
soft magazine look.
Now, how do you diffuse a light source?
Well, there's two tools
that I wanna share with you today.
The first is diffusion paper.
Now, this is gonna be
a little bit noisy
but this is diffusion paper.
It is specially made paper
that's designed to go
in front of your light source
and it will take that tiny little bulb
that you've got on your light
and it will spread it over
the full surface area
of this diffusion paper.
Now, if you wanna buy some of this
there's two companies that make it;
LEE Filters and Rosco Filters.
And thankfully, they both use the same code
for full white diffusion
and that is 216.
(paper crumpling)
I did mention it was noisy.
The second attachment is a soft box
or an octabox.
And essentially, what it is,
this is an attachment
that you can mount
onto the front of your light.
And as you can see it adds distance
between the light itself
and that diffused area
and that allows the light
to fill the space and become
this nice big beautiful soft light.
Now, this soft box is a fairly small one
and it has a single layer of diffusion
but you can get ones
that are much much larger as well.
Now, if you just google the model
of your light plus soft box,
there are soft box attachments
made for pretty much every light
out on the market,
so you'll be able to find something.
So now that we've had a look
at some of the tools we can use,
let's put them into practise.
First we're gonna have a look at
hard light pointing directly at our subject.
Now, I apologise to Lauren my fiancee in advance.
She's beautiful under any lighting condition
but some are more flattering than others.
As you can see,
we have harsh, defined shadows
and it's highlighting some aspects of the face
that may not be as flattering
as a softer light source.
Now, we're gonna add our diffusion paper.
And as you can see we've taken
that very small point of light,
the original hard light source
and it's spread it out
over a small surface area.
But it is bigger than the raw bulb.
Now, this is softening the light
but not by a whole lot.
It is helping to melt those shadows
and create some graduation
but it's still fairly defined.
Now, we're gonna add our small soft box.
And as you can see
this is a much larger surface area
than just pegging diffusion paper
onto the front of the light.
And that has created a much softer look.
Those shadows are really starting to melt
and graduate nicely.
And it's really starting
to look very flattering.
Now, we're gonna take it up a notch.
I'm gonna put on our massive
48-inch parabolic soft box.
And this actually has
two layers of diffusion.
One in the middle of the soft box
and then one on the outside.
So you're getting double the softness
and as you can see
when this one's up nice and close,
it's beautiful,
it's beautifully creamy, it's soft.
The shadows are almost imperceptible
and you just get that
gorgeous magazine quality look.
When I wanna shoot a subject
with ultra-soft beauty lighting.
This is my go-to tool.
Now, let's look at the second way
to soften light, bouncing.
Bouncing operates on a similar way to diffusion
but instead of passing through a surface,
it's reflected off that surface.
Here, you'll see we have a hard light
and it is bouncing
into a piece of pulley board
and reflecting that beautiful soft light
back onto our subject's face
because the surface of the bounce board
is much larger,
it gives us that same effect as diffusion.
That you can bounce light
off essentially anything.
You can bounce it off a wall,
you can bounce it off a roof,
you can even get really creative
and use things like books or hands
to reflect light
back into your subject's face.
And the larger the surface
that you're bouncing off
the softer that light is going to be.
One thing to bear in mind
is you want to bounce your light
off something perfectly white
so that it doesn't create
any colour shifts in your light.
If you bounce something
into a yellow object,
you're going to end up
with yellow light.
If you bounce something into a red object
you'll end up with red light.
So there you have it.
That's how you can use diffusion and bouncing
to turn a hard light source
into a soft light source.
Thanks for watching guys.
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(upbeat music)