How to Eliminate Softbox Hot-Spots

I’m not known for being shy about my hatred of softboxes. Sure, softboxes are often cheap and extremely easy to use, but they rarely produce beautiful light when compared to many other modifiers.

Why the hate?

Softboxes were originally designed to emulate window light. Yes, they often come in the same shape and size as a window, but that is where the similarities end and I defy anyone to show me a window that produces light like a softbox does. The reason for this is simply due to how the light actually arrives at the subject. One light is emanating from millions of miles away and the other is originating from a source mere inches away. It’s this very important factor that can dramatically change how light ultimately looks on its subject and unless we take steps to address this final look, we may simply be ‘making do’ with illuminating our subject rather than actually properly lighting them.

The sun produces beautiful light on us as it collimates the light. Essentially this means that light rays are travelling side by side and straight to us thanks to the sun being so massive and so far away. A softbox on the other hand is very close to us and this sadly throws light out in all directions. As we can see here, the light from those two identical size and shape squares is very, very different.

What’s a Hot-Spot?

Because the light source is often quite close to the subject when shooting portraits (and especially close when managing coloured light properly), this can result in hot-spots appearing in the shot. These hot-spots are simply brighter areas in an image and in studio lighting, they are often caused by the lighting modifiers used.

Softboxes are the biggest offenders of hot-spots as they have a centralised light that spills light out in all directions. If the subject is close to the softbox, then they in turn are closer to the bulb. The closer to the bulb or light source that part of the body is, the brighter it will appear in the frame. Failing to manage these hot-spots effectively can result in unprofessional-looking light and sadly it is very common in a lot of studio portraits today.

To make the most of a softbox, we often bring it in close to the subject. This results in a big, beautifully soft light, but if we’re not careful it can also result in hot-spots being present in our image, especially if we are capturing an image that encompasses more of the body. The centre of the softbox is where the light source is and this is where the brightest part of the subject will be.

What’s the Alternative?

*Fresnel lights have been used on film sets since the 40s for their beautiful-looking light.*

Now that you know what hot-spots are and how softboxes cause them, what are the alternative lighting modifiers to reduce this issue? Thankfully there are many modifiers out there that significantly reduce this effect. Modifiers that collimate the light (send the light in parallel lines to the subject) produce a very beautiful and far cleaner-looking light. Ironically, these modifiers are not new and the fresnel lights have been used on film sets since the 1940s for this reason. Fresnels do require a lot of space though and are great for bigger studios, plus they can be pretty expensive too. There are plenty of other modifiers that do the same and you’ll find my site littered with alternatives as I strive to avoid ever using the dreaded softbox wherever possible. My favourite non-hot-spotting modifier though has to be the beauty dish as this is very easy to use, can be used very close to the subject and even the good ones aren’t prohibitively expensive.

Beauty Dishes

Beauty dishes have a unique property in that they have a diffusion cone placed inside the modifier right in front of the bulb. This diffusion cone takes the brunt of the hot-spot and then proceeds to bounce all of that light back into and around the modifier. This now bounced and diffused light will then exit the modifier before ultimately reaching the subject in a far more even spread of light. Whereas many modifiers that evenly spread the light require some distance to the subject to do so, beauty dishes excel at being close to the subject and this is why a beauty dish is always my number one choice as a key light on set.

As I said, I would use this beauty dish as my key-light at every opportunity as it excels at producing very distributed lighting even in small spaces. To further demonstrate my point, take a look at the example image below as it shows just how prominent the hot-spot on softbox is compared to a beauty dish when used close to the subject.

***Click to enlarge:*** This image shows both a softbox and a beauty dish being fired at a white wall. On the left, we can see a softbox and the type of light spread it produces. As I explained earlier, you can clearly see how the centre of the light is bright and then immediately starts to drop off to shadow pretty aggressively. Compare that to the beauty dish on the right which is clearly doing a far better job at evenly distributing the light and almost entirely eliminating the hot-spot.

Umbrellas vs Stripboxes

Hopefully, I’ve adequately demonstrated above how soft-boxes are convenient, but far from the best choice for portrait lighting. I’ve personally not used a softbox on set (apart from as a fill-light) for over a decade and I have zero intention of doing so any time soon.

The issue with softboxes is not a new one and I’ve been recommending against them for a long time now. Many of you more mature readers will be aware of my early work with gelled lighting and you may even remember that I released a fairly popular video many years ago on how to use gelled lighting in portraits. In said video, I use umbrellas as my edge lights because umbrellas eliminate hot-spots by pointing the light away from the subject and bouncing it back. Umbrellas are a great and very cheap way to produce even lighting, yet I still see people emulating the light I teach in that video not with my recommended umbrellas….. but with the dreaded stripboxes!

I get it, umbrellas are cheap, so they obviously can’t be very good, right? Ironically, this is one of the rare occasions where the cheap alternative is actually pretty good and if we disregard the hilarious £300+ umbrellas from Profoto - please don’t let anyone tell you their umbrellas are worth the ridiculous 10x price!!! - umbrellas are a solid and very affordable lighting modifier. As I said, they point the light away from the subject and the bounced-back returning light is fairly evenly distributed if you can avoid the strobe casting a shadow. But even with that strobe shadow issue in mind, umbrellas are still infinitely better than stripboxes for all of the hot-spotting reasons we’ve outlined above.

Still insist on ruining your photos?

This article has done nothing but tell you ‘you’re doing it wrong’ and although I highly recommend you try alternative modifiers like beauty dishes and umbrellas, what if you still want to try and make softboxes and stripboxes work?

Initial ND Solution

This was an interesting idea when I first decided to tackle this for the article. Can we really target the hot-spot problem and try to fix or alleviate it? My first idea was to reduce the brightness of the centre of the softbox. This should obviously work, right? Reduce the centre brightness, reduce the hot-spot. Initially I opted to try ND or Neutral Density gels in the centre of my softbox.

*I initially started out by using layers of ND gel to reduce the hot-spot effect from stripboxes.*

*The tests involved the softboxes being brought in close and were about 200cm away from the subject.*

I would attach the ND gels to the central diffusion panel that is inside nearly every softbox. This diffusion panel is perfectly placed to attach these gels and I was convinced this would be an easy solution to the hot-spot problem.

I tried all manner of combinations of layers and amounts of ND gels, but ultimately none of them had any significant impact on the hot-spot produced. The light was still brighter in the middle and was just darker overall.

After nearly giving up, it dawned on me that the proper solution had literally been staring me in the face this whole time.

How do beauty dishes solve the hot-spot problem?

The Softbox Beauty Dish combo….. The Beauty-Box?

That’s right, the beauty dish uses a diffusion cone in its centre. This dish stops the hot-spot and then bounces that stopped light back out and this is what the ND gels weren’t doing. Sure, they were reducing the light, but the NDs weren’t bouncing it back out in any meaningful way.

The solution?

Ironically, the solution was just regular old tinfoil. That’s right, the soft malleable metal you wrap your chicken in was the key.

Instead of the ND gels, I now attached the tinfoil to the centre diffusion panel of my softbox and made sure that the shiner side of the tinfoil was the side facing the light.

*By placing tinfoil in the centre of my stripbox, I was able to significantly reduce the hot-spot produced.*

No, this doesn’t look pretty and I’m not saying this will solve all your lighting problems, but I was still surprised at how effective this was. More surprisingly though, was how much of the centre of the softbox I had to cover to make a meaningful difference to the hot-spot. This was a big 35cm x 165cm stripbox and the sheet of foil in there that I ultimately ended up using for the best results was around 70cm long!

JakeHicksPhotography_A (2 of 3)withhs.jpg

JakeHicksPhotography_A (3 of 3)without hs.jpg

JakeHicksPhotography_B (1 of 2)with hs.jpg

JakeHicksPhotography_B (2 of 2) without.jpg

I get it, this is starting to look like an ‘emperors new clothes’ situation here as it doesn’t look vastly different on screen and without saying ‘trust me bro’, you really are going to have to trust me that this DIY tinfoil inner diffusion sheet is doing something.

Is it a solution that I recommend you all go out and cram yards of tinfoil into all of your softboxes? No, certainly not, but it was an interesting demonstration to me just how much of a hot-spot is present in our softboxes and that hot-spot is only magnified when that softbox gets closer to the subject.

*Results from tinfoil placed over the inner baffle of a 60cm x 60cm softbox.*

I also tested the same theory on a smaller 60cmx60cm softbox. Although the results above are less pronounced, you can still see that placing a small sheet of tinfoil over the centre of the inner diffusion panel still has a noticeable effect on the hot-spot.

*I opt to never use stripboxes for my gel work. Instead, I always use umbrellas.*

Closing Comments

Although I did finally arrive at a passable fix to the hot-spot problem of softboxes, it was far harder to eliminate than I first thought. My initial idea was to buy a sheet of Neutral Density gel, throw it in my softbox and a couple of hours later I’d have a working article to share. That was yesterday and that was absolutely not the case as the ND gels were quickly abandoned in favour of raiding the kitchen cabinet for alternatives.

Again, I was amazed at how hard it was to reduce the hot-spot effect and larger and larger sheets of tinfoil were needed to further reduce the bright centre. In fact, to evenly distribute the light around my large stripbox, such a large sheet of tinfoil was needed that it ultimately reduced the light output by nearly 1.5 stops! Sure we have powerful strobes and it’s not too much of an issue, but that may be why we don’t see softbox manufacturers opting for this internal diffusion cone in their softboxes. Surely a little shiny square in the middle of the diffusion baffle would go a long way…. but at the cost of 1.5 stops of light?!

Beauty dishes get away with the diffusion cone due to them also having a parabolic curve to reflect the bounced light back out in an optimal way thereby negating a large amount of the lost light a softbox would.

So no, I don’t recommend you fill your softboxes with tinfoil just yet, but I still think this trick is a useful one to be aware of. You never know, you may be in a situation where you’re shooting in a tight space and you simply cannot get your softbox back away from the subject enough. With this predicament in mind, a sheet of tinfoil in your softbox may well be just the thing you need to spread that light more evenly in that tight spot.

I will wrap this all up with a final thought though as I hope that if nothing else, you’ve learned that softboxes produce unsightly hot-spots when used in close to the subject. As an alternative, I urge you to try a beauty dish instead as I swear you’ll be blown away by the difference. Yes, I know some beauty dishes can be expensive and at first glance, they may look the same, but if you can afford it, I recommend you look for a beauty dish with a more pronounced curve to get the best possible lighting with almost no hot-spot at all.

I’m loathed to include a link here as I know it just looks like I’m flogging my affiliate code, so please, if you find a better alternative, just use that instead. That said, my old Bownes beauty dish is a beautiful shape and I insist on using it. Sadly Bowens no longer exists, but of course, Godox has somehow managed to ‘adopt’ that original Bowens shape and now make an excellent dish instead.

22” White Beauty Dish

The 22”/55cm white beauty dish is what I always use on my key-light and I love this thing!

A silver one is also available, but that will add more contrast to the shot so choose accordingly - the white one is simply more versatile.

Godox White Beauty Dish

Please note that I’ve included affiliate links above for PixaPro and I will benefit (albeit minimally) from the sales of any of these products should you purchase them. To that end, please feel free to use my discount code ‘HICK5-OFF’ at essentialphoto.co.uk/JAKEHICKSPHOTO to receive a 10% discount on any purchase via their site.

I wish you luck with your future shoots and I hope you’re now a little more aware of what to keep an eye on when using softboxes. But again, here is your weekly reminder to burn all of your softboxes.

JHP Livestreams…

I livestream every other Tuesday night via YouTube and there I answer your questions, critique your shots, take community images into Photoshop to work on them and discuss all manner of lighting tips and techniques. I look forward to seeing you and your work there real soon. Jake Hicks Photography - YouTube

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Lighting Setup: Studio Lighting with Lasers!

I was struggling with the title for this one and although it sounds like ridiculous click-bait, this lighting setup really is about using lasers alongside our more traditional studio lights.

I’m someone who gets bored extremely quickly and although there’s probably a modern medical term for that ‘personality trait’ today, I choose to lean into this quality as it typically forces me to keep playing with new ideas AKA ‘be creative’.

With this creative itch always niggling at the back of my brain, I’m always on the lookout for new ways to keep things interesting in the studio. Sure, there is a time and place for tried and true lighting setups, but it’s always fun to break the rules and try something completely different once in a while. With this in mind, I’m continually searching for new ways to illuminate my subjects. Sure, there are thousands of purpose-built lighting modifiers for us to try, but there are also tons of other, far more ‘creative’ ways to illuminate our subjects too.

My wife can attest to this but I have boxes of ‘nerd-shit’ as she calls it, which contain vast numbers of items that emit light. Some of them don’t even emit light at all and an abstract silver fruit bowl and silver-painted satellite dish all patiently await their moment to ‘shine’ in the studio.

I’m not exaggerating either, I really do have boxes of this stuff that I purchase and think ‘I’ll use that one day’ and today was the turn of an old laser pen I’d bought many years ago.

Laser Pen

You’ll be pleased to hear that this week’s setup involves a very affordable light as the light in question is actually just a simple laser pen which can be purchased for around £10 - £15. There’s nothing particularly fancy about these laser pens, although if you want to get some interesting shots with a little variety, I recommend getting one that comes with some additional filters and features. For example, the most common colour these lasers come in is green. I’m not a huge fan of green on the skin for portraits so I’d recommend getting one with either a red or blue variant. The other important thing to look for is the filters that come with them. As we know, all lasers are emitted from a single point and as cool as this is, the single red dot is not very exciting to look at when used in conjunction with studio portraits unless you’re going for the assassin cosplay look. With this in mind, I recommend you find a laser that comes with a bunch of filters to spread, separate, scatter and otherwise modify that single beam.

As I mentioned, there are a multitude of options, none of them are particularly expensive and I’ll speak about what I went with later in the article.

You’ve Been Warned: I know you’re not an idiot but if I don’t say this I know I’ll get messages about it, but please be careful when using lasers. Don’t point them in your eye and don’t point them directly into your camera as lenses can magnify them to the point that they could damage the sensor. Most of these commercially available lasers are fine as long as you’re not staring into to them for prolonged periods, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Plus, always pass this warning along to the models and team on set too.

The Setup

Now that you know what we’re dealing with in regards to the specialist light included in this setup, I’ll go over the setup in full and then break down any pertinent sections afterwards.

*Rotolight NEO 3 Pro as a background light set to blue*

*2 of the Godox TL30’s joined together and used as a fill light set to red*

*The laser pen is clamped up high next to the key light (AEOS 2 Pro set to white light ~4500K)*

TL;DR/ADHD/Artist Setup Explanation

Position small light set to a blue colour/attach blue gel against white backdrop
Place white key-light up high and angled down towards model
Have a large soft-light set to red/red gel attached behind you pointed towards backdrop
Position smaller light just out of shot as fill-light set to red/red gel attached
Lastly, place laser pen up high next to key-light and angle towards model

Kit Used

2x Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro
1x NEO 3 Pro
1x R120 Parabolic attached to the AEOS
2x (joined) Godox TL30
Laser Pen
White Backdrop

Camera Settings

Camera - Nikon D850
Lens - 24-70mm f2.8
Shutter Speed - 1/125th
Aperture - f2.8
ISO - 200
Kelvin - 4300K
Focal Length - ~58mm

The Results

Click to enlarge any of the shots below.

Model: Little B

Breaking it Down

I’m sure a lot of this is fairly straightforward to many of you and the core underlying setup of this shot is essentially your standard key-light, fill-light and background light. But let’s go over a couple of the details in case there’s anything that doesn’t make sense.

Background Light

I have my background light as a Rotolight NEO 3 Pro and the reason for that is because it’s small and very easy to hide behind the model. If you’re using a light back here, I’d advise the same and place it close enough to the backdrop to manage the vignette of colour accordingly. For example, place the light close enough, maybe 12 inches away (30cm) from the white background so that you get a small spot of colour. I have mine set to a bold blue colour that harmonises well with the vibrant red. For example, a deep navy-blue colour goes well alongside a bold blood-red colour.

Fill-Light

For this, I’m actually using 2 Godox TL30’s screwed together to make a 60cm tube light. I’ve only recently acquired this light, but it’s proving very useful as a fill light. Why? This tube works well when placed close as it spreads light along its length but the power of the light drops off very quickly. For example, it’ll be bright on the chest, but drop off to almost no power on the face making it very controllable. If you don’t have a tube here, then any typical fill-light like a small softbox or even a white umbrella can work well too. I have mine set to a bold red colour to match the red from the laser light.

Global Fill-Light

You’ve likely seen me use this technique a lot in my setups and it's a very effective way to add complimentary light and colours to the scene. If you’re not sure what light I’m referring to here, then it's the large softbox you can see in the diagram above. I have a Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro in my 120cm Softbox here, but again, any large softbox and light combo will work. I have mine set to the same bold red as my fill-light as well as the red laser. The one role of this light is to add a little illumination to the model's shadow areas, but primarily it illuminates the dark vignette left via the blue background light.

Key-Light

The key-lights are typically the easiest light in a set to place as they’re what I refer to as my ‘objective’ lights. There is no ambiguity in their role on set as they must correctly expose the model's skin. Other ‘subjective’ lights can be bright or dim based on personal taste, but the objective lights must be accurate. I’m using my favourite key with my Rotolight AEOS 2 Pro set to around 4500K, but you could also use a beauty dish here as an alternative.

Laser Pen

The fifth and final light here is the (tiny) star of the show, the laser pen. As you can see from the BTS shots above, I clamped it in place via a SuperClamp, but you can use whatever method you like to keep it where you want it. My advice for position; keep it as close to the key light as you can get. That way, neither the laser nor your key is casting conflicting shadows and again, you can see in the BTS above that it’s mounted right next to the AEOS.

Points to Keep in Mind

Laser Pen

I spoke about this at the top, but I’ll go into a little more detail here with regards to the laser pen. As I mentioned, try to get a red or blue one as the green (more popular) ones wont look good on the skin. By all means try it for yourself, but that’s just my recommendation. Alternatively, just get one that has all the 3 colours and play with what works best on the day. Edit: I’ve seen some lasers that also produce a violet-coloured laser - I could see that one being a cool colour to try too.

The other factor is the creative options when it comes to the laser filters. If you just purchase a simple laser pen (the one you tease those poor cats with), you’ll simply get a single, tiny bright dot. We want a laser with some filters that actually refract that single beam of light into a bunch of different shapes and looks.

*Many laser pens will have a variety of ways to refract the single-dot laser and I’d urge you to get one that comes with some options.*

*Once you have laser filters, it’s a good idea to test them all to see what will work.*

Pictured above you can see some of the effects that come with the laser pen I tested. Not all of them are ideal for portraits, but the variety will help you find something that works. I personally preferred the dots and stars as they had a very noticeable effect on the skin.

Colours

I’m sure it's fairly obvious by now that I love to incorporate colours into nearly all of my shots. Here I was choosing my coloured lights based on the laser colour being red. Red is a very bold colour so I opted for another equally bold colour to compliment it. That said, reds bold and dominating colour is pretty tricky to work with, so if you see some other coloured lasers on offer, definitely consider getting them as I could see the blue or even violet lasers being a little more versatile to work with.

If you’re not particularly confident with coloured lights then there’s nothing wrong with just trying white light instead. I could see a very bold red laser standing out nicely against regular white-light on the skin.

Closing Comments

This is one of those setups that is fun to play with. Will it make it into your regular rotation of looks? Maybe not, but pulling a few ideas out of the lighting toolbox every now and then is a lot of fun, plus you never know what other ideas may be triggered by this. After all, trying something new and being creative is never time wasted. I wish you luck and if you give this one a go and let me know if you do as I’d love to see the results.

Products Used

Rotolight

Although I am sharing my own personal thoughts and findings about the lights mentioned in this article, many of you will want to know that I am now a ‘Master of Light’ for Rotolight. As such, I have been given a discount code to share with you when purchasing any of their products via the Rotolight website. Use my code ‘JAKEHICKS10’ when purchasing and you’ll save a bunch of money. I’ve never earned a penny of commission on this though, so if you find a better deal elsewhere, go for it.

Rotolight AEOS 2 PRO

With the AEOS 2 PRO, the world is your studio. Combining the shoot what you see benefits of powerful continuous light with a High Speed RGBWW strobe, AEOS 2 PRO offers unmatched versatility for photographers and filmmakers. Uniquely lightweight with an ultra-thin design, it’s never been easier to achieve beautiful soft light on the move.

AEOS 2 PRO Website Link

Rotolight R120 Sofbox

A softbox is pretty much a must-have piece of kit for any studio shooter, so if you own any AEOS 2/Pros, this is certainly worth taking a look at. It comes with internal baffles as well as the eggcrate grid on the front. Plus, it has 16 sides making this an incredibly round and clean light source.

R120 Softbox Website Link

Rotolight NEO 3 PRO

Small but mighty, NEO 3 PRO is the brightest LED on-camera light ever made. Experience unrivalled power and industry-first innovations in a compact form factor you can take anywhere.

NEO 3 PRO combines the shoot-what-you-see benefits of continuous light, with a High Speed Sync RGBWW flash for unlimited creative possibilities.

NEO 3 PRO Website Link

Please note that I’ve included affiliate links below for PixaPro and I will benefit (albeit minimally) from the sales of any of these products should you purchase them. To that end, please feel free to use my discount code ‘HICK5-OFF’ at Essential Photo to receive a discount on any purchase via their site.

TL30-K2 RGB LED Tube

A 2 light LED kit that includes 2x 30cm full RGB LED tubes plus a whole host of useful accessories including grids and mounting clamps.

TL30-K2 Two Light Kit Link

JHP Livestreams…

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Flash Vs LED - Which is better?

If you’re reading one of my articles, then I think we both know you’re no fool. You also know I’m not going to give you a definitive answer to this flash vs LED debate, but what I will give you is some points to consider. After all, I happily shot with flash for over 20 years, what made me switch to LEDs?

To provide a little context for those not familiar with my work, I pretty much exclusively shoot indoors in the studio and even when I’m out of the studio, I’m turning my location into a studio. This information is relevant as we need to broach the mammoth-in-the-studio debate which is…. brightness.

No, LEDs are not currently as bright as flash. If you’re someone who regularly uses 1000w strobes and you’re often using them at full or close to full power, LEDs are likely not going to be suitable for your needs at the moment. That said, if you’re someone who works in a studio or any light-controlled space, you may find that the sheer volume of other benefits that LEDs can provide, may outweigh this initially concerning downside.

Lighting Characteristics

Let’s look at some of the characteristics of both flash and LED first and then we can discuss a few of the more important ones in more detail.

Characteristics of LED

Continuous
Adjustable Kelvin values
Brightness can struggle in certain situations
Easily used for both stills and video
Millions of coloured light options
Very stable exposure and colour
Models can struggle under constant bright light
Panel LEDs have almost no modifiers
Panel LEDs create beautiful even lighting
Anyone can use an LED light

Characteristics of Flash

Instant
One fixed Kelvin
Bright enough for almost any situation
Only used for stills
Only available as white light
Minor exposure and colour variances
Model friendly exposure
Extremely versatile for lighting modifiers
Flashes suffer from localised hot-spotting
Certain knowledge and skills required to use

The biggest argument against LEDs is always, power. No, LEDs aren’t as powerful as many big strobes, but I’ve still used my LED panels outside on a sunny day in conjunction with the daylight.

Convenient and Nice to Have Features

Let’s now break down some of those characteristics and put them into the context of my work as a fashion and portrait photographer. These benefits are all important, but for me, they are bonuses and nice-to-haves, kinda like your car having heated seats and electric windows. These features aren’t going to sell me the car, but they all add up to clearly making your life a little easier.

Flash is Instant - I don’t need to capture fast-moving objects

If you’re someone who is photographing dancers or sports where there is a lot of fast action and movement, the 4000th of a second flash duration (often flashes are even faster than that now) is going to be very useful to you. For regular portraits of regular people, LED can easily capture everything crisply with your regular shutter speeds applied.

Flashes Extra Brightness - I work in the studio, I don’t need super-bright lights

There is no denying flash is certainly brighter than LEDs. But how often am I utilising all of that power when I’m working in a dark studio and my f2 lens? For me, the LED brightness is enough, but I would need to be mindful of shooting with them outside in bright sunlight…. if I ever decided that I wanted to do that for some reason!

Flash can be Easier on Models - Most professional models can cope with both

Recently I’ve heard talk of models getting tired, fatigued and even uncomfortable under bright LED lights. You have to remember that LEDs are constantly bright whereas flash is just a split-second of brightness. It’s worth noting that all movie and theatre sets are using constant lights and the vast majority of those sets are using tungsten hot-lights. LEDs are nowhere near as oppressive as those lights so although LEDs may be different to what they’re used to, most professionals will be absolutely fine with this.

Flash Requires More Skill - Experienced shooters will already know how to use both

There is no denying that flash requires significantly more skill than LEDs to use, after all, LEDs show you in real-time exactly what the final image will look like. What you see is what you get. Flash is a little less forgiving and will often require more experience or at best, more trial and error to get the look you want. In short; experienced shooters will already know how to use both and new shooters will benefit greatly from the ease of use of LEDs.

LEDs Continuous Light - I don’t shoot video

Many photographers today are being asked to shoot video more and more. I personally don’t shoot any video at all, but if I did, the convenience of LEDs allowing you to simultaneously shoot video alongside stills is huge. If that’s you, then this alone is almost a deal-breaker.

LED Colour and Brightness Stability - Nice, but its minor for my work

Several disciplines within photography require multiple images in a set or series to be visually identical when it comes to colour and exposure. If you’re shooting a lot of e-commerce fashion, having rock-solid colour consistency throughout a very long shoot, is crucial. Many cheaper flashes will vary their Kelvin value significantly as the bulbs get warmer, cooler, older etc. Still-life is another discipline where constant exposure and colour are vital. If you’re doing a focus-stacked image of a watch containing 60+ photos, having the exposure and colour exactly the same in all of them saves you an incredible amount of time. I can’t speak to all LEDs, but I’ve shot many setups locked off on a tripod and the exposure and colour are so consistent, you can't even tell the image is changing. If you’re after consistency, high quality LEDs deliver.

Benefits with Everyday Use

Next, I want to look at the important features to me that I know I’ll use in nearly every single shoot I work on. To me, these are the features of a car that decide whether I buy it or not. Engine power, boot space, how many doors etc. These may not sound sexy, but like I said, they will all significantly impact how I use these lights day to day.

LEDs Adjustable Kelvin Values - I adjust Kelvin…. a lot!

For some, this won't be a deal-breaker, but for me this feature is huge! I don’t say this lightly, but I personally put my Kelvin adjustments up there with aperture, shutter speed and ISO in terms of importance. Not a shoot goes by where I don’t make an informed decision on what white balance to set my camera to in relation to my lights. Flashes have one single Kelvin colour and to change that, you have to use colour correction gels like CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) and CTBs (Colour Temperature Blues). Yes, you can adjust the Kelvin value of your flash with these gels, but it's a faff at best and at worst it's a time-consuming guestimation of 1/4, 1/2 and full colour temperature gels.

***Click to enlarge -*** *I’ve included a couple of screen grabs here from one of my studio lighting workshop PDFs and they should help provide some context. For example, here we can see the Kelvin range of flash vs LEDs.*

LEDs Millions of Colours - I shoot a lot of colour

Unless you’re new to planet Earth, you should know by now that I use a lot of colour and for the last 20 years I’ve been using coloured gels to colour my lights. This is fine and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we all know how much of a time-consuming pain that can be. Have you ever tried to gel a softbox? But even if you’re a pro origami master at wrapping your lights in coloured gels, there are limits to how many colours you have immediate access to. Sure, there are thousands of coloured gels available, but most of us don't have a warehouse of different coloured gels at our fingertips. Full RGB LEDs completely revolutionised that by putting millions of colours in their lights all instantly accessible at the touch of a button. I can’t speak to all LED lights, but my Rotolight NEO 3 and AEOS 2 Pros have over 16 million colours all right there on the easy-to-use touchscreen. If you’re a fan of using coloured light in your work, using RGB LED lights is just inevitable at this point.

***Click to enlarge*** *- Again, here we can see the limitations of flash colour vs the incredibly comprehensive colour palette that is immediately available to RGB LED lights.*

**Click to enlarge - The first ever shot I took using the Rotolight AEOS 2 and NEO 3s** - I was immediately struck by how incredibly clean and beautiful the light quality was, even without any modifiers on the lights.

LEDs Light Panel Quality - Panels produce beautifully even lighting

We’re about to get into the realm of subjectivity here, but when it comes to light quality, I can’t understate just how vital this ‘quality of light’ factor is. You’ve just heard me gushing over all the other benefits of LEDs above, namely the instant access to millions of colours at my fingertips, but none of these features swayed me to ditch my flashes and change to LED. The one feature that made me switch to LED was not that they’re incredibly lightweight and super simple to use. Nor was it the huge Kelvin range or their millions of instantly accessible colours. The one thing that immediately got my attention above all else, was the quality of light on portraits.

To illustrate my point here, let me tell you a story.

I’m not known for being at the forefront of tech. I still shoot with a Nikon and that Nikon still has a mirror. So when I happened to be in the same studio as an LED demonstration a couple of years ago, I was not particularly interested. My flashes work fine and I’ve been using them for decades without issue. If it ain’t broke, why fix it, right? So, during this LED demonstration, there was plenty of talk of all the typical things we all know LEDs can do. Kelvin adjustments, millions of colours etc etc. No, I’m not an early adopter when it comes to tech, but I still know what a lot of it does and I was already very familiar with the average LED bullet-point sales pitch. Instead, the eye-opening moment happened when I was asked to photograph the model there on the day as part of the demonstration. As soon as the first shot was taken, my eyes were engaged. What was going on here? Why did this portrait look so good? It was just a basic LED panel pointed at the model’s face with no modifiers attached, why did the lighting look so beautiful?

You can see the first shot I took with LED panels shown here and although the following information gets a little esoteric and borders on the ‘trust me, bro’ side of things, there are a couple of interesting aspects happening here when it comes to quality of light and none of which are present in a single flash unit on the market today.

NERD ALERT

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NERD ALERT ||

NERD ALERT - Dissecting ‘Quality of Light’

The following gets into the ‘weeds’ a little and is arguably only going to be of interest to those with a little more experience and patience. The following isn’t going to be fundamental knowledge for the topic of this article and none of this information will be included in the test at the end.

In the image above, I’ve broken down the areas and elements that immediately stood out to me as soon as I looked at this photo on the back of my camera. For context, this image was taken with a Rotolight AEOS 2 as my key-light. That is a round LED panel, roughly 12-13inches in diameter. Behind the model on either side are two NEO 3 LED panels. Again, these are round panels, but these are only the size of the palm of your hand AKA, they’re small. -Details on these lights are included at the end of this article.

Image 1 above is the full shot.

Image 2 shows the beautiful highlights on the models face. These are very clean and even though the model isn’t wearing any specialist makeup, the large AEOS panel is providing a big specular highlight on the surface of the models skin very easily.

Image 3 is showing the NEO 3 edge light set to pink. What’s important about this, is the even lighting and very controlled exposure from the top of the head all the way down the shoulder and even the arm! Remember, this is a palm-sized LED panel! Stripbox users in shambles right about now!

Image 4 looks at the opposite side of the model, specifically the hair. The hair is being blown and is separated into smaller fly-away strands. The models hair is also fair coloured. The hair-light is also just out of frame as I was looking to create a little flare into the lens too. AKA this is a recipe for those tiny, light-coloured hairs to be blown-out and over exposed, but that is absolutely not happening at all.

If we look past the fact that this was the first shot straight out of the gate (remember, these are LED lights, what you see is what you get - photography has never been easier, especially if you’re also using a mirrorless electronic viewfinder that shows you the exact shot before ever pressing the shutter), this was pretty impressive to me. Yes, these elements may be minor to many of you, but to those of you with a little more experience under your belts, I’m sure you’re seeing what I’m seeing too.

This is tough though, right? LED brands can’t market the ‘trust me, bro’ approach that we’re looking at here. How do they put on the specs sheet ‘you’ll burn your stripboxes tomorrow the light looks so good!’

In the next section I’ll aim to look at what I think is causing these types of light qualities as more and more LED panels like these really are upsetting the meta within lighting. And don’t forget, movie sets have been using extremely expensive versions of these LED panels for years so it was only a matter of time before it became financially viable at a consumer level too.

NERD ALERT OVER

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NERD ALERT OVER ||

A Single Point of Light Vs Many Points of Light

Flashes have a single bulb from which all of their light is emitted. This single bulb is easily modifiable, but that lone point of light does result in the light being pushed outwards in all directions. Conversely, LED panels distribute their power over far larger areas thanks to lots of smaller bulbs rather than a single powerful one. The LEDs evenly distributed light results in some beautifully clean-looking light thanks to the beams reaching the subject more uniformly. This pattern of light is also similar to the collimated light you’d find with natural light and again, it's this even look to the light that makes the LED panels light so visually appealing.

Here’s another illustration from my PDF workbook that accompanies my latest lighting workshop, but it essentially demonstrates how having a mini-wall of light produces smoother, cleaner and ultimately more beautiful-looking light when compared to a focused single point of light.

I’ve spoken about trying to define the ‘quality of light’ several times in the past, so I won’t bore you with it yet again, but essentially, natural light is the most beautiful looking light there is. Why? It’s due to the very clean parallel lines of light that illuminate the subject and these parallel rays of light are often referred to as collimated light.

***Click to enlarge -*** Even as a studio shooter, I have to admit that natural light is still the most beautiful-looking light. The reason for that is due to how the rays of light reach us. The sun is so far away and so massive, that the small group of rays that light us are striking us in parallel lines and these parallel lines are known as collimated light.

As I said, this is one of those characteristics that you’ll never see listed in any brochure. How do you quantify the ‘quality of light’? You can’t, but what I will say is, when it comes to using key-lights on my subjects, there is zero hesitation when it comes to always using my AEOS 2 Pro here, yes I use it with the diffusion dome attached, but that’s it. This is one of those occasions where I’d really encourage you to see it for yourself and I’m sure, like me, you’ll use an LED panel for a portrait and never look back.

Flash Modification - Thousands of options

Ironically, LED panels greatest strength, is simultaneously its greatest weakness. That’s right, the truly beautiful light produced by that panel, is also very tricky to modify. The single point of light found on strobes is clearly a very versatile shape to work with as you can now make that single point somewhat-soft as well as somewhat-hard. For example, we can use a snoot on that strobe or we can use a softbox. So yes, that single point of light is incredibly versatile, but in my opinion, it’s a jack of all trades and master of none.

I think it’s hard to understate just how modifiable modern strobes are today. If you want one tool that does the job of many pretty well, a strobe will serve you incredibly well and I’ve collected countless modifiers over the years that all fit onto the same light. From vast softboxes and umbrellas, to ring-lights and fresnels, the strobe is truly the most versatile light on the market, but is it the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none?

So, yes you can use a softbox on that strobe to create a soft light, but you’re always fighting with that very prominent hot-spot you find when working with single-point lights. The same can also be found when using a hard-light modifier like an optical snoot. Yes, you can make the light hard, but again you’re also fighting with that hot-spot.

In the test shots from my PDF, you can see how a strobe struggles to spread the light evenly with a variety of modifiers. This won’t happen with all modifiers, so it’s good to know which one produce the best quality light.

As you can see in my test shots above, hot-spots are the bane of beautiful-looking light and sadly, as versatile as strobes are, many of them struggle to really spread the light evenly when they have such a powerful and centralised light source. Oh, and this is your weekly reminder to stop using stripboxes! You’re unlikely to simply take my word for it, so please, at the very least, do your own tests and see for yourself if my tests above are too in the realms of ‘surely, my modifiers can’t be that bad?!’ And woe betide you poor souls using recessed Profoto heads, as those hot-spots are far, far worse than these exposed flash-tube shots shown here.

So, what’s the solution?

Yes, the singular source of light can be tricky to manage and spread evenly, especially when used close to the subject. But there are modifiers that you can use that spread the light more evenly. Again, I spoke about this at length in the past, but beauty dishes, fresnels, spotlights and even umbrellas do a fantastic job of eliminating the hot-spots. If you don’t already use those, you should certainly give them a try.

Are there alternatives?

So what do you do if you love the flexibility and ease of use of LEDs, plus you love the ability to adjust your Kelvin values at will and you love having millions of colours so easily available? The simple answer is to get a single-point LED light.

***Click to enlarge:*** *My Godox SZ150R is the happy middle-ground between the convenience of millions of colours and Kelvin adjustments vs the annoying hotspots of single-point lights.*

Pictured above you can see the single-point LED that I use and it’s the Godox SZ150R. The single-point light at the front is a very diffused white dome that simply hides a very large and powerful LED behind it. As big as this LED is, it’s still small enough to be housed inside of the S-fit (Bowens mount) attachment bracket. This now means I can use all of my old Bowens modifiers on this LED head. Yes, it will still suffer from the hot-spotting present on any single-point light (that said, this inbuilt diffusion dome reduces hotspots more than I thought it would), but it means I have all of the convenience of LED colours and Kelvins that I’ve now become accustomed to.

***Click to enlarge -*** Can you tell if this is shot with LED or flash? Does it matter in the end? No, if you can’t tell then the process is irrelevant, but if that process also happened to be extremely easy to the other, does it matter more to you then?

Closing Thoughts

Shock-horror, once again there is no easy answer to the flash vs LED debate. That said, I know what personally works for me and if you’re a studio portrait shooter, you may well find the Goldilocks formula works for you as well. Yes, I am a Rotolight ‘Master of Light’ aka they pay me to provide training and workshops for them, so take the following as you will, but their AEOS 2 Pro panels are simply outstanding.

You have to remember that a couple of years ago, I thought LEDs were an absolute joke. I thought LEDs were lights for people who were too daft to know how to use strobes. Yes, LEDs are very easy to use and the what-you-see-is-what-you-get style of lighting can be argued as cheating today, but it’s that quality of light aspect that made me originally sit up and take notice.

Times change and new tech is always coming out. You have to remember that strobes were once the convenient, inferior lights compared to the old hot-lights with fresnels. Strobes were very adaptable and easy to use thanks to not getting third-degree burns every time you wanted to move them, but their quality of light was always a bone of contention and it’s why so many still swear by the old hot-light and Fresnel combo even to this day (remember I mentioned that Fresnels collimate the light? That’s why people love the look). The LED panel as a key-light produces a gorgeous-looking light and I could see that as soon as I took the first shot.

I currently use 4 Rotolight AEOSs (2 regular and 2 Pro) and I will always use them directly on the skin whenever possible. But of course, as a creative light shooter, there are times when I need a hard light, a sliver of light on the face or background for example and this is where the panels struggle and it’s for this reason that I use the single-point Godox LED SZ150R.

No, LEDs aren’t comparable to strobes in terms of raw brightness just yet, but they are getting brighter and brighter with each passing month. That said, how much brighter can they get before it literally becomes too uncomfortable to model underneath them for extended periods? Models are already mentioning the brightness is fatiguing so even if there was an affordable super-bright LED available, would I even be using it on my models?

For me, the millions of available colours, the Kelvin flexibility and just the gorgeous quality of light far outweigh the downsides of them being a little dimmer than strobes. Plus, as a Nikon shooter, I don’t get to say this very often, but you gotta quit being stuck in the past 😜