Are You Missing Out on Hard Reflectors?
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The MOLA Rayo, an awesome hard reflector
As a lover of, and a specialist in the subject, of lighting, I was thinking of conversations over the last while and realized that all of the conversations revolved around the quality of light referred to as softness. Along with colour and direction, quality is one of the triad of constituents of lighting, but I think that some folks are missing the benefit of the quality options brought by hard light.
I get it. Most people’s experience with hard light is flash on camera. It is certainly hard light, and without dimension, structure or other enduring aspects. I would say the same thing for so called soft light with flash on camera, such as the vaunted Tupperware sold under the Gary Fong brand. When used with a flash on camera, it is still flat and ugly but at least it’s really expensive for what it is.
Consequently to explore hard light properly, we need to get the light off the camera. While I am biased towards flash and strobes, the same tools can work for continuous LED lights, providing that they actually deliver enough power to be useful for live subjects.
Sample Images
I am including example images constructed with my only lighting planning tool called Set A Light Studio. I never prep for a lighting setup without it. The background is a neutral grey roll of paper. The background light is a 500ws strobe with a standard 5” reflector and a LEE Marine Turqoise gel. The hair light is a 500ws strobe with a snoot and a Lee CTO gel. I commonly use a CTO on blonde and red hair, a ½ CTO on brown hair and a ½ CTB on black hair.
The Key light is always a 250ws Strobe using different reflectors, noted in each image. Exposure is always a 3:2 ratio, 1/250th of a second, f/8.0
The Hard Reflector
A hard reflector used to come by default with studio and portable type strobes. That appears to have fallen off in packaging in recent years, probably because buyers never bothered to learn to use and leverage hard light. Rightly or wrongly they immediately went to umbrellas or soft boxes and never used the hard reflectors. Their loss.
AMY LIT using a 5” hard reflector with a 40 degree grid as the key light
A hard reflector is just that. It is typically a bowl of some radius and internal curvature finished with a silver interior and a black exterior. The bowl constrains the spill but not as much as some people assume, working as they do based on Internet misinformation and a lack of trial on their own part. The diameter of the bowl has an impact on coverage angle with a larger bowl providing a wider area of coverage.
The internal curvature has a significant impact on the directional control and spill of the reflector. Some that are more circular throw light in a wider coverage field, while those with a parabolic shape tend to try to focus the light more.
Parabolic reflectors are a lot like parabolic soft boxes. To act as a focusable source, the light must enter the parabola from a forward focal point, so that the light rays hit the reflector such that when they emerge, they are predominantly parallel. Since most so called parabolic devices have the light enter from the base of the parabola, they don’t actually do much more than a regular bowl in terms of focus. A paragraph of warning about parabolic lies.
AMY lot using a Laege Diamer deep bowl reflector as the key light. I added a ND 2 gel to drop output to match the other samples as the flash was already at its lowest power output. Reflectors are very efficient.
The deeper the bowl the more constrained the light becomes within the area of coverage. The deeper the bowl, the less spill that there is. This is easily proven by trying two different bowls in a darkened space against a plain backdrop. The shallower bowl has more spill while the deeper bowl has less spill.
Once you have defined the bowl size, it’s time to consider your use cases, and perhaps some accessories to the hard reflector.
Useful Modifiers for Hard Reflectors
The most useful modifier for a hard reflector in my experience is the grid. Grids come in different angles of passage and can clip on or snap into the rim of a hard reflector. The sole purpose of a grid is to control spill. Put the light where you want it, and not where you do not want it. You see what you will get, presuming your strobe has a modelling lamp function so you can preview the flash shot. If you are using a sufficiently powerful LED lamp, you will see the effect as well. On that subject, how much power? I would say 65,000 lumens at 1 metre as a minimum for use with human or animal subjects. See my review on the Godox for more information.
I always have a snoot for hard reflectors. A snoot is an extremely aggressive cutter in that it dramatically reduces the spread of light by passing it through a small hole. All decent snoots can also take a selection of small grids that go in the outer opening for further spill containment. In my experience and recommendation, the most successful hair light is a snoot with a grid.
Another tool to control spill also comes from cinema lighting and is called the barn door. It is a kit of four panels that act as flags to control spill. They are very old school and work fine, although I find them finicky and prefer external flag systems.
Specialty Hard Reflectors
amy with a 24” white beauty dish as the key light
The Beauty Dish called such for obvious reasons is the most prominent of the specialty hard reflectors. Beauty dishes come in different diameters to provide coverage at different light to subject distance with something in the 20” to 24” diameter range being most common. All true beauty dishes incorporate an internal hard reflector inside the bowl that prevents any direct light from reaching the subject, instead reflecting that light back into the white or silver bowl for final reflection onto the subject. Some higher end beauty dishes offer the option of a very tight screen to let a tiny bit of direct light through, while others will use a translucent reflector instead of the opaque type. My favoured beauty dishes by a long shot are the MOLA line, made in Canada. They use a mathematically designed stepped bowl and can use a variety of internal reflector options. I use the internal reflector called the Opal in all of my MOLA dishes.
Another speciality hard reflector, that is difficult to find is the fresnel. It is a fairly boxy thing, drawn from cinema lighting. Basically is is a big tube fronted by a fresnel lens with a variable internal aperture. It minimizes light loss while providing focusable control. It is very useful to light areas of a scene specifically, such as a particular background element that supports the primary subject. A fresnel lens is a type of optical lens that consists of a flat, thin, and lightweight surface with concentric grooves or steps etched into it. This design allows the lens to achieve the same optical effect as a traditional curved lens but with reduced material and weight. The fresnel is named for its inventor, French optical physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel. While not particularly common, when they are needed, nothing else does the job with the same efficiency.
Finally, the rarest hard reflector, is the optical spot. This is an attachment that goes on a strobe that contains a focusable lens and that takes gobo (cuculoris) inserts as well as a variable iris insert. Smaller and cheaper than a true fresnel, FJ Westcott markets a unit under their Lindsay Adler signature products. These are very cool lights, but have very specific use cases.
Buying the Right Hard Reflector
First off, a hard reflector is really the tool for a studio strobe, not a hotshoe flash. In that case, you must determine what mount your strobe uses, and purchase the hard reflector for that mount. I use Profoto strobes in my studio and all my hard reflectors are Profoto mount, although I have some old Bowens stuff that I have adapted to mount to my Profoto strobes, such as my fresnel which is not a high usage item. Hard reflectors are most commonly available from the strobe manufacturer although in some occasions, there are third party options available.
If this approach is really interesting to you and you do not have strobes at this point, I am going to recommend the Godox Witstro AD600 Pro This link that takes you to B&H Photo Video will show the individual light as well as kits and accessories. Be sure to get an appropriate transmitter for your camera.
