Make it or Buy it! This 5-in-1 pop-up reflector from Westcott cost me $37.50. My homemade 2-in-1 reflector cost me $10.50. So the question is, can I match the light quality of a pop-up reflector with a homemade reflector?This is not just any old reflector. This is a reflector we used to make back in the day back on movie sets. Just about every DP I ever worked with had a reflector made out of this kind of bead foam. It’s a beautiful light. It’s a soft light. It wraps really well. But you know what, I do love a good pop-up reflector. The pop-up reflector is like a staple in the world of lighting. It’s so easy to put it away. It’s easy to carry it with you. You get five different options including a translucent, which is fabulous. So let’s see if we can match the quality of my homemade reflector with my pop-up reflector.
So let’s make our reflector. This is not a difficult process. You start with a ½ inch sheet insulation foam it’s 4’x8’. You can use 1 inch, you can use 3/4 inch. Just if you use 1 inch or 3/4 inch it’s going to make it heavier duty and thicker. You may not have to double it. You probably don’t have to double it if you get to 1 inch. But it makes it more expensive. I used 1/2 inch. I peeled the plastic off from one side of it and cut it. And now I’m going to double it. I’m going to stick it together to give me a heavier duty reflector. That just made it cheaper because now all I have to do is buy a 1/2 inch piece of foam. If you’re really serious about this you want to have this in your studio for a long time then I would use a 3/4 inch or a 1 inch and just cut it and tape it.
And that comes to the next step. We’re going to tape the edges together. So we tape those edges together, that just keeps the Styrofoam from shedding. It just makes it a nicer presentation and it looks really nice. One surface is the white surface and the other side is the silver. So now I have a two-in-one reflector. Now for the lighting showdown, shoot, shoot, shoot.
All right, so I brought Angelia outside here and look at the light here, it’s terrible! This is terrible light. So I do what I always love to do when I’m outside. I’m going to put Angelia with her back towards the sun. And the sun’s kind of in the trees and things back there which is going to give me a beautiful background. But it’s going to be very dark on her face and that’s where the reflector comes in. So we got her in backlight here. Got a nice rim light on her hair. I’m going to shoot this on manual, 1/2,000th of a second at f/2.8 and 200 ISO. And now I’m going to get back and just shoot a nice image of her just with this reflector, with the pop-up reflector. So let’s see what that pop-up reflector looks like. Let’s shoot, shoot, shoot.
All right, so there are those images. It’s beautiful light. It bounces, it wraps around her face. (Tamron 70-180mm Lens.)I’ve got it slightly to the left so it gives us a nice look into the shadow side of her face. But we got a beautiful soft light. I mean, it really is a beautiful soft light. It’s up high so it’s coming in where it needs to be. It just looks excellent. So let’s switch out now our homemade reflector and let’s see what that looks like.
What’s in my SKB road case? Well, let me show you. I’m a photographer so I have lenses. This is my Canon 70-200mm. I got my 5D Mark IV body. I’ve got a 24-70mm lens right here. And I even have a Sigma Art 50mm lens. This lens right here shot Eddie Van Halen on one of his last photo shoots. So it’s a very personal lens for me. I love this lens, it’s very sharp. And if you’re going to be shooting shows you got to protect your ears. You got to have your ear protection in your box. So I got that in there. And that’s what I have in my SKB road case right there.
All right, so there’s my homemade reflector. Same setup. I’ve got the backlight behind Angelia. And I’ve got a nice rim on her hair. And this is going to fill on her face. So just look this way a little bit Angelia. There we go. And going to turn this just a hair. That reflector is up high so it gives me a nice down light. It’s not too low. And let’s shoot, shoot, shoot.
So I’m shooting on a 180mm lens here. So I’ve got a nice compression. The background falls nicely out of focus. It just looks really sweet in the background. So there’s some images with that homemade reflector. You know what, it’s really interesting because it gives me a very similar look. It gives me a beautiful soft light on her face. It wraps around. The reflector is in the right place. It’s up high and gives us beautiful drop shadow on her nose. And yet we’re looking into the shadow side of the face. So there’s some of those images. It has a beautiful look as well. There’s those two images together. Look at those two together. See what you think. Which one of those two images do you think looks better?
One thing I did learn from doing this little experiment is that the efficiency of that flat Styrofoam reflector is about a half of a stop higher. So it gives us more light because it’s flat. And gives us a stronger surface to bounce back onto her face. Whereas with the popup, the pop-up reflector, they’re pretty flat but they’re not as flat. And it just, that’s not quite as efficient. It could also be that the bead foam is just a harder surface. Whereas this is just a little softer. So look at that. Can you see, is one softer than the other? Here’s the two next to each other again. Does one of them look softer to you? There’s the names of the ones you’re looking at. Did you guess it right?
So here’s my conclusion. You know, the light from that homemade reflector is really pretty. It’s a beautiful light. It’s a bounce light. That reflector is flat. So it’s more efficient. It bounces light in a little stronger. It just gives you a really great device to be able to point and aim your light. It does a really excellent job at that. But the hard part about that is that it’s just big and you know, to carry that in your car to take that around is very difficult to use. And that really is a disadvantage. It’s really a studio device. It’s something to be put up and left in a studio situation.
The pop-up on the other hand is a really pretty light as well. Not quite as efficient because it is not completely flat. But it’s got the advantage of, one, being a five in one. You got five different options including a translucent. Which I think is incredible when you’re shooting outside because that translucent lets light pass through. It can soften the sun on somebody’s face. It just is a beautiful light to work with. It gives you a great look. So it collapses, carry it with you. It works really well.
So this one for me is a tossup. I use that homemade reflector for in the studio because it’s going to be on a stand. It’s going to be staying in the studio all the time. I love that. I use that pop-up reflector on location because I love the ability to pop that up. I love using the translucent. I use that in so many different ways on location. So for me, I use both of these. It’s a tossup. So buy a 5-in-1 pop-up reflector for crying out loud. Break the rust off from your wallet. It’s the price of going to a movie on a Friday night. There’s no reason not to have one. And make yourself a nice reflector for in the studio. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
