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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Features

Why Most Photographers Should Have Reflectors

Chris Gampat
No Comments
07/09/2015
3 Mins read

20-New-Reflectors-2

 

Reflectors are by and large the most versatile tool that a photographer can have in their tool kit. These light modifiers have many uses in various situations and can make almost any photo look better. If you’re a landscape photographer, you probably don’t need one of these. Same with you being an event photographer. But if you’re a wedding photographer, portrait photographer, photojournalist, or a studio photographer of any sort then you should have a reflector in your tool kit. If you have a five-in-one reflector, you’ve got even more versatility.

Filling in Light

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Olympus EM5 Link Cosplay shoot (16 of 23)ISO 200

Reflectors, first and foremost are designed to, well, reflect light! Got some sunlight behind a subject? Place the reflector in front of them and you can fill in the shadows once your exposure is adjusted. This can help you get that beautiful shadowless look.

But it reflects more than just sunlight. The image above is from a shoot we did a while back where we bounced the light output from an Impact LiteTrek monolight onto the model. The monolight hit the reflector and the reflector bounced the light back onto the model to get this look.

In a controlled lighting situation like the one we were in, it gave us some beautiful light output.

Of all the ways that you can possibly use a reflector, using it to bounce the light output from a flash or a strobe is honestly our favorite and most effective way. So if you’re using a hot shoe flash and want to make the output look better, bounce it off of a reflector which can act just like the walls and ceiling that you use otherwise.

Diffusing Light

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Impact Quikbox and LiteTrek photos (5 of 17)ISO 160

Not only can reflectors bounce light into a scene, but they can also diffuse it. If you’re shooting in a scene with lots of natural sunlight, placing a translucent reflector in between your subject and the sun can soften the light that the giant star is outputting and make the subject look much more pleasing.

Like with all light modifiers, we recommend that you go big here. The larger the light modifier is in relation to the subject, the softer the light will be. In that case, go with a larger reflector.

But besides the sun, these can also diffuse flashes and monolights, but be careful about placement. We recommend setting a hot shoe flash head to wide and backing it away from the reflector a bit lest you otherwise create a hot spot that puts too much light towards the center and not evenly.

Think of the reflector as the diffusion panel of a softbox.

Changing the Color of the Light

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sony 35mm f1.4 review photos Natalie's portraits (1 of 4)ISO 4001-640 sec at f - 1.4

Aside from reflecting and diffusing light, they can also change its color. There are many different types of reflectors:

– White will take the existing light, neutralize it and bounce it

– Black will block it

– Gold will make the light color golden and warmer

– Soft gold will do the same thing as gold but toned down

– Silver will act pretty much like a mirror in terms of reflections

Different colors also have different effects on the image depending on how specular they are. By that, we mean how reflective, in layman’s terms at least.

Bringing Out Details

Specularity is also a great reason to use a reflector as both silver and gold tend to add extra punch to the light that also therefore works well to bring out extra details in the image. Silver and gold can make a sharp lens look even sharper by adding light to the right areas and bringing out details that the lens and camera couldn’t see otherwise.

black exposure gold light Photography reflector silver white
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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