We’re going to compare a $26 reflector with an $800 soft box and strobe combination. Which one do you think is going to look better? I was pretty surprised. Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on the Slanted Lens we are going to take a look at that reflector, $26 reflector, 5 in1 popup versus an $800 FJ400 and soft box combination. What’s the difference in these two? Well let’s look at quality of light. Let’s just talk about the ease of use of them and the depth of field.
But first off, why use a reflector? It’s just easy to carry around with you. It’s easy to pop up. It’s easy to fold up. It’s easy to carry in your car. It’s a simple lighting source. 
Usually there’s somebody hanging around who can hold it for you so you don’t even need a stand most of the time. Just give it to the bridesmaid or the bridegroom or the mother or somebody. Somebody can hold that reflector for you. But that being said, this is one of the least expensive ways to get into lighting. What’s the disadvantage of a reflector? You have to be in a place that works for the reflector. You have to have sunlight. 
You can’t be in deep shade. You can’t be in a place, a cloudy day does not look good with a reflector. But a day like today that is sunny and bright and beautiful, a reflector looks excellent. It really is an easy, easy, easy lighting tool to use.
So what’s the advantage of a soft box and a strobe head? A soft box and a strobe head allows you to light anywhere you need to be, anytime you need to light. If it’s a cloudy day you can give a great highlight on the face. It can look beautiful. It allows you to choose your backgrounds more easily because you’re not tied into having to be in a certain place. So you can use the sun with that reflector. This is your sun. This gives you your light. You can overpower the sun sometimes with them. That’s what makes a soft box and a strobe so really valuable. It gives you complete control.
So let’s take a look at the quality of light. First I’ve got Angelia here with me. We’re going to take some pictures of her at the park and we’ll start with that reflector and see what we got. All right, I’ve got Angelia here set up in one of my favorite setups and that is with a reflector. 
I am looking down this dark kind of area here but it’s got some highlights in it. It’s back lit on her so I’ve got a nice backlight on her. But I’ve got a little bit of sun peeking in that’s going to hit my reflector. 
So this just gives me complete control with that reflector. I’m going to fly this reflector, I got a little clip. I love this little clip from Westcott. It’s like 20 bucks. It allows me to clamp that reflector on. 
I’m going to shoot with a Tamron 70-180 mm lens, f/2.8. I’m going to shoot wide open at f/2.8. You can’t beat this. (Turn into the light there, all right Angelia.) So that box is up high. It gives us a nice highlight. It gives us a Rembrandt and it gives us a soft background. So I’m going to go to, on manual I’m going to go to about 1/1250th, between 1/1250th and 1/2,000th of a second at f/2.8. And I’m going to shoot some images.
So there’s the reflector. Take a look at some of those images. 
Look how beautifully that wraps around. 
Here’s an image without the reflector. So look at the difference. We’ve got just a really muddy face. It’s not very bright. It’s just not near as nice looking. But now we add that reflector. 
Look at how beautiful the light is on her face. I’m using the white side of the reflector which is plenty to bounce into her face and it’s not going to overpower her face. It’s not going to be too hard. The sun is going give us a beautiful light. All right, now let’s go on to the strobe. Let’s take a look at the strobe.
My name’s Kevin Baldes. I play bass for a band called Lit and we’re from Orange County California. It’s incredible to think of the bands that have come along after us and they’re already gone. 
There’s been years where it’s like, oh man, that band’s doing so much better than us, you know. Like what are we doing, you know? And then, now they’re already gone and I don’t know what they’re doing, you know. So like I said earlier, as time goes on you appreciate it a lot more and you know that you’re blessed. And I get to go to some new town and people show up and I entertain them. And I get to play music, what I love to do. You don’t work a day in your life if you love what you’re doing, you know. 
How have SKB cases saved our lives on the road? Well I’ve backed over cases with my truck. We’ve played in the rain. We get a lot of rainy shows and sometimes we got to quickly close up the gear in the cases. And because they’re i-series they’re protected from the rain, which is great. Yeah, they’re very durable cases and I love them and wouldn’t use any other company.
So let’s switch it out now to our soft box. This is a great combination here. It’s an FJ400 with a round box from Westcott. 
It’s that rapid box that sets up really quickly. It gives me a light, nice round source to be able to give me a soft light on my person. What I had to do is change my setup just a little bit. Because I didn’t want to put the soft box in exactly the same place as the reflector because then the white face of the soft box would have been lighting her face just like the reflector did. 
So I moved her over a little bit. I still have a little bit of light on her hair and I’m going to put the soft box in the shade so that it is not going to bounce light back in on her face.
So the problem I have with my soft box is I can shoot at 1/200th of a second or 1/250th of a second at f/2.8. That’s as fast as I can get my shutter to go. So let me take a quick shot there. All right, here we go. So there, that’s blown out. 
Take a look at that. It’s just completely blown out. There’s nothing there really to see. So what I’m going to have to do is I’m going to have to go to like f/11 to give myself the right background. So I’m going to switch up to f/11 here. It might have to be f/16. We’ll take a look at that and do a shot there at f/11 and f/16. 
Now I have the correct exposure. The soft box looks beautiful on her face. It’s wrapping really nicely. Just a pretty look. But look at my background. Let’s compare that to the reflector. 
That background is way sharper than we had of the reflector. The reflector is f/2.8. This is f/11 or f/16. And now the background is just not near as nice. So let’s take a look at a close-up shot. 
Now a medium shot. 
Now a little further back comparing that background with the reflector versus the soft box.
That really gives the reflector an advantage, it truly does. The reflector gives me a much shallower depth of field and beautiful light on the face, but a shallow depth of field. The strobe gives me a beautiful light on the face but I have to have a much deeper depth of field to be able to shoot out in sunlight like this. 
But if you can set your strobe on high-speed sync, which I’m going to do right now, now I can put my shutter up to 1/2000th of a second at f/2.8. I get that beautiful light on her face and the background falls beautifully out of focus.
So let’s take a look at those two, the strobe versus a reflector close shot. Let’s take a look at a medium shot. 
Now let’s take a look a little further back. The background on these two look much similar, very similar to one another. 
They look similar to each other because I used highspeed sync to be able to move my shutter up to 1/2,000th of a second which I needed to do to be able to stay at f/2.8. Then I put a little highlight on her face. It gives me a beautiful light. 
So here’s a setup with the strobe turned off, very dark. We don’t see anything so that soft box is definitely providing our light on her face. That’s giving us our light.
All right, let’s wrap this up. So Angelia, you saw the images. Which one do you think looked better? I think this one looked a lot better. Okay why is that, any reason? I think because of flash. When it shoots out instead of this where you have to rely on sun. She’s absolutely right. That’s a great point. That is the biggest disadvantage of a reflector. You’ve got to have a sun and you got to have the sun in the right place. 
The biggest advantage of a strobe is you can put this wherever you want it and you can create your own sun. But the disadvantage of strobe is if you don’t buy a strobe that has high-speed sync then you’re in trouble shooting outside. You can’t shoot outside very well. And in some ways reflector, I think looks better. Reflector is better if you don’t have a strobe that has high-speed sync. So if you want really great looking images outside then a high-speed sync strobe is the way you’ve got to go. So there’s a look at a reflector versus a soft box. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’ and you probably want to use that one. There you go!
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