Photography: Using Fernel Lenses as Modifiers

Video Transcript

"In this segment I'm just going to show you what a fernel looks like. As you can see the fernel also creates a nice spot. The light is actually really diffused, which is really nice, and has a great gradiation out to the edges, and also you have the ability to control these to control them as either as a flood or as a spot. So you could, so that's actually a really nice feature on one of these. Fernels tend to be really expensive. That's why people tend to modify older movie lights, but you can get dedicated units, but, you know, you could get a similar effect with a grid, but these have a particular look that, you know, is kind of hard to duplicate and that's why they're, they're very popular for getting that glamor, forty Hollywood look and that's what they're great for. They're also really nice as back lights too. It really illuminates smoke well if you're trying to get smoke in the photo. Then, then you'd be, these work great for that. As you can see the fernel creates a nice, spotty, specular look. It's fairly, it's very contrasty but relatively soft. It doesn't have the harsh look that you would get from a straight reflector and it's also kind of spotty. You can actually open it up more if you want to keep it, get more, a little bit more of a flood. You can see how it keeps it nice. It's still soft, but it also throws a nice strong shadow on the background. These, these are actually, these are actually great lights and fun to play with. Fernels are great as backlights because what they do is they, they, this is actually really, they do a great job of illuminating. If you want to kind of hide a light behind somebody fernels are really good for that. They create a nice soft edge. It's actually a really common technique. You see it in movies and TV, things like that, and that's how you get that look."