Star shaped catchlights?

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Mrs B

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Jayne
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Let me start by saying I've never used any type of studio lighting before so apologies if this is a dumb question!

Anyway, I just bought a 36" umbrella and with my speedlight bouncing from it, I got star shaped catchlights...

5620226192_fa14f43a62_z.jpg

(Sorry the pic is oversharpened, I originally sharpened for FB, then uploaded to Flickr)

I've never seen these before, are they ok? Or not. And if not, how do I get plain round ones?
 
That's because it's a star shaped light. The catchlights are just a specular reflection ( a reflection of the light source).
If it doesn't suit your taste, just use a different shaped light.
 
I'm guessing it's a silver umbrella? The reflections off the individual panels is sometimes more noticeable with them, as opposed to white..

It's easy to PP catchlights like that, so long as you keep it subtle. Just filling them in a bit, without changing anything too much. It's quite common to take the reflection of the flash head out of a brolly shot, to leave a nice clean octagonal shape.

Lovely shot BTW :)
 
HoppyUK said:
I'm guessing it's a silver umbrella? The reflections off the individual panels is sometimes more noticeable with them, as opposed to white..

It's easy to PP catchlights like that, so long as you keep it subtle. Just filling them in a bit, without changing anything too much. It's quite common to take the reflection of the flash head out of a brolly shot, to leave a nice clean octagonal shape.

Lovely shot BTW :)
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Thanks. :)

Yup, it's a silver umbrella. I actually quite like them but being as I hadn't seen them before I didn't know if they were ok or not, lol. I'll give it a go in pp and see what I can come up with. Otherwise, I'll just leave them as is. Thank you. :)
 
Mrs B said:
Thanks. :)

Yup, it's a silver umbrella. I actually quite like them but being as I hadn't seen them before I didn't know if they were ok or not, lol. I'll give it a go in pp and see what I can come up with. Otherwise, I'll just leave them as is. Thank you. :)
Click to expand...

The difference with a silver brolly, as opposed to white, is the light is harder and slighly more directional, casting darker, harder-edged shadows. Not much, but a bit.

You can see the reason for that very well in your shot, as more of the light comes from the centre, and less is diffused within the brolly itself to fill out the edges. The light is a bit more directional, with a brighter pool in the middle.

It's a handy option to have. The other bonus is they are more efficient, so if you're struggling for power you might get an extra stop or so just by swapping to one of those. Something of that order off the top of my head.

Not to be confused with a transluscent shoot-though umbrella, completely different. Very soft and diffused light spread across a wide area, and masses of spill bounced straight out of the back. They're very uncontrolled, but in a normal room all the light spilling and bouncing around everywhere often gives just the right amount of auto fill-in ;)
 
HoppyUK said:
The difference with a silver brolly, as opposed to white, is the light is harder and slighly more directional, casting darker, harder-edged shadows. Not much, but a bit.

You can see the reason for that very well in your shot, as more of the light comes from the centre, and less is diffused within the brolly itself to fill out the edges. The light is a bit more directional, with a brighter pool in the middle.

It's a handy option to have. The other bonus is they are more efficient, so if you're struggling for power you might get an extra stop or so just by swapping to one of those. Something of that order off the top of my head.

Not to be confused with a transluscent shoot-though umbrella, completely different. Very soft and diffused light spread across a wide area, and masses of spill bounced straight out of the back. They're very uncontrolled, but in a normal room all the light spilling and bouncing around everywhere often gives just the right amount of auto fill-in ;)
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I agree.
Silver umbrellas can be very useful, but like everything else they have their limitations, and the shape of the catchlight is one limitation.

Shoot through umbrellas are capable of creating much softer light than any reflective umbrella, simply because they can be placed as close as you like to the subject, unlike reflective umbrellas, where the flash head is between the umbrella and the subject.

TBH, umbrellas are so useful and so cheap that it's a good idea to have a selection - no one tool does everything
 
Thanks guys! Very informative. I think I'll invest in a shoot through brolly too (like you say Garry, they're so cheap). To be honest, when I bought this one, I hadn't really researched it at all....
 
Interesting, was the brolly fully opened or partly closed? I know some pro's use brollies half opened when they want to concentrate the light more like Zack Arias.
 
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