First softbox, what size?

shellz090

shellz090

Suspended / Banned
Messages
184
Edit My Images
Yes
I'm wanting to treat myself to a softbox, I'm going to be using it for portraits of people, couples etc I've had a look online and notice that they come in a variety of sizes, how do I know what will be a good size? What do you recommend? It will be used on a speedlight if that makes any difference
 
Yes, using it on a speedlight does make a lot of difference, speedlights have fixed reflectors that direct all the light forwards, this means that light doesn't bounce off the walls of the softbox as it should, so isn't evenly distributed around the softbox. A stofen-type diffuser helps to some extent but isn't a complete answer.

The upshot of this is that you won't get even illumination from a large softbox, but the results will be better from a smaller one, say 60 x 60cm.

What a softbox does is to make the light source bigger (the softbox replaces the flashgun as the light source). The bigger it is, relative to the size of the subject, the softer the light. So, even a small softbox, used very close to the subject, is capable of producing soft light as long as the subject isn't too big.

Move it further away though, necessary if you're photographing full length or groups, and the light becomes smaller in relative terms, and the shadows become harder
 
Im in the same boat as the OP actually and found out the hard way in what Garry was saying but not using a softbox but an unbrella.

I think for a full body shoot you really need a proper strobe light not a flash to achieve a full body shot evenly as a single flash even at full power is not enough to light up a large softbox
 
You colud use 2 speedlights in the softbox:)
 
coldpenguin said:
Even if you use the 'diffuser' part of the speedlight?
Click to expand...

Yes, that can work.

The problem is, to fill a softbox evenly with no hot-spots (or darker corners) the light has to radiate all around, get bounced off the sides and nicely scrambled. The circular flash tubes in studio heads do this naturally and softboxes are usually designed with studio heads in mind. To make double-sure, they usually have a second diffuser panel positioned inside.

With a speedlite, all the light goes straight out of the front, hardly touches the sides, and hits the diffuser front pretty much directly with little diffusion. So the centre is brighter than the edges unless you find a way to spread it around more. The diffuser wide-angle panel can help a lot, sometimes offering a pretty good solution.

For example, if the wide-panel will cover a 14mm lens (on full-frame) that's 104 degrees side to side, but only 81 degrees top to bottom. If the softbox sides are at maybe a 90 degrees angle, that will spread light to the sides quite well, but not top/bottom. That could be enough, and the way to test it is to shoot the softbox itself, square on from the front, and adjust exposure so it's just around the blinkies threshold. This will show the hot spots very clearly.

Another trick is to fit a Stofen diffuser cap (or similar, only a few quid off Amazon). Test it as above, and to get more light out around the sides, cut/drill some holes. It's easy enough to get very good results this way, but needs a bit of DIY and trial and error. Start with just a few holes, maybe 1/4in, then a few more until it's right.
 
You can get some fantastic results using a softbox with a speedlight, obviously there are limitations etc. But, still worth looking at.

The only brand that I have any real experience with have been Westcott. They do a range called Apollo, and they are superb. There are also a couple of the small version Apollo Mini on Flea bay at the moment for about £40. The key to these is the speedlight is mounted pointing to the rear of the softbox, this helps the light to be spread.

Hope that helps.
 
Last edited:
IMO i think its best to use just unbrellas for speedlites as you can never get the same look on a softbox when using a speedlite inside it due to the reasons already mentioned.

OP are you able to grab yourself a proper strobe light? decent ones can be bought for £200 and it will be far superior then a speedlite
 
Westcott will give you good results but you need to get a tilting stand for it to be really useful I have the 28" and it gives great light but a PITA without the appropriate stand. The Lastolite Ezbox hotshoe softboxes work well with speedlites. I've also found their 8 in 1 brolly to be very good. It can be used as various brollies and softbox -type modifiers. IF you can't/don't want to stretch to the 8 in 1 then just buy a cheap brolly and you're off

There's a lot of hoo-hah about lighting mods and sometimes folk get hung up on precious points that they won't notice in reality. I say try a cheap brolly first.

An awful lot of well known togs uses pretty basic bits and bobs like white sheets etc to mod light quite successfully.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top