How to Choose Right Umbrella for Photo Shoot

"Hi, I am Rob Mitchell. Here again for expert village. Still on the topic of building our studio, I want to talk a little bit about umbrellas. I showed you the example here of how we have a flash head pointing into an umbrella. What does the umbrella do? The umbrella softens the light. I already mentioned that if we point the flash head directly at our subject, we get a very harsh, strong light. Much like if you put a flash light in someone's face. That's not very flattering when we are photographing models, mom, dad, aunt Mae, whoever you want to talk about. We want to create a nice, flattering look for them. So when you put the umbrella in front of the light, the light bounces off all sides of the umbrella and wraps around the face. It cuts down the shadows. You don't get those harsh, chiseled shadows. You get very soft, fine shadows. It molds the shape; it brings out the dimension in it. Now there are different types of umbrellas, this one is all white, it gives a very nice, as I said, soft reflection of the light. A lot of the light is lost as it goes right through the umbrella. I mean it is not a 100% opaque. Some light is lost. You can get another type of umbrella, such as the one we have here. This one has a black coating on the outside. Virtually, no light passes through the umbrella. Therefore, you've got almost 100% of the light bouncing back in the subject. This is a really real plus, especially when we're working with a 400 watt second power pack. That's not an awful lot of power to start with, so we don't want to be losing any out the back. Now the other difference, if you've noticed between this umbrella and that one is, it has a silver lining. It's not quite the white one that we have here. It's a little bit brighter. A little more reflective. Again, it reflects a bit more light back on the subject. So naturally you would say, "Why would we ever want to go with the white one, when we can just take the silver one?" Because the silver one is a little bit harsher, not much, but the shadows are little bit stronger. You get a little bit more of a defined lines. This one is definitely a softer, more flattering light. Quite often an umbrella like this works better on an older subject. Somebody that may have a few lines in their face, a few creases. You may want to soften them. This one will work a lot better on someone that is younger who has that smooth porcelain skin, where you don't have those laugh lines, those wrinkles. It's going to be a little bit harsher."