NSFW Using Strobes for soft natual / window Light?

russ85

russ85

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I'm kin to try some portraits with natural soft window lighting in a studio. Sadly my studio has only small windows so the ISO needs to go up crazy high.

I was wondering what the general tricks are to using Flash Strobes to "fake" soft window type lighting.

Here are a few examples of the type of lighting I mean (they look like natural window light but I don't think they are).

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My general thought would be to use large softboxes as far away as possible. My studio is small and has all white walls so my second thought was to point the softboxes at the walls and reflect the light, plus use large reflector boards.

What do you think?
Any help would be welcome as this is something Im struggling to get my head round.
 
Bouncing softboxes (or anything else) off of the walls will produce soft light, if that's what you want - but lighting is actually about creating the right shadows in the right places, so this kind of uncontrolled lighting effect isn't what I personally would be going for...

If you want to use softboxes to mimic window light, then just use large rectangular softboxes, place them at a height that a window would be at and use gaffer tape on the front on the softbox to create glazing bars.
 
The classic artists' window light, from a north-facing window, is very soft indeed. With no direct sun, the light not only comes straight through the window - as you would get with a same-size softbox - but also from all sides, reflecting off walls and ceiling and virtually filling the whole room. And fall-off is more gradual than the inverse square law suggests.

Garry's suggestion of bouncing off a wall is probably a good and easy technique.
 
Massive scrim between the light and the subject, light facing away from scrim onto biggest convenient bounceboard - doing that kind of thing distance is v useful!
 
Hi David. It's been a while... :)
 
Hey Hoppy :p

I got distracted by computers but I came back!

You grew a post count while I was away :o
 
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