When working with light modifiers, sometimes bigger is better

 

 

When working with a studio light or strobe, you will almost always want to modify the light as it comes from the source. There are many ways to modify light, including through softboxes, umbrellas, bouncing it off reflectors and much more.

In the video below, we see Patrick Hall of Fstoppers using a Profoto B1 strobe with two different Octabox modifiers. He uses a three-foot version and one which is a whopping seven feet in diameter. On the camera side of the equation, he is using a Nikon D850 with a Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 G2 zoom lens.

As you increase the size of the modifier, you will need to increase the power of the light to keep the exposure the same, all else equal, as you will be dispersing light over a larger surface area. Further, as you increase the size of the modifier, the light will become softer and have a longer range of falloff. As Hall says, when it comes to modifiers, sometimes bigger is better.

(Via Fstoppers)