Light is the number one ingredient in photography. Sometimes you can have too much or too little light on your subject in relation to your background. Sometimes a light source is casting harsh shadows that you would like to soften. Sometimes you only want to set up one light and use a reflector to fill in as in the picture below. Reflectors are cheap and portable and let you bounce light to either add light where you want it or to help fix problematic lighting.
What is a reflector?
As the name suggests a reflector is used primarily to reflect light. However, when you get one of the very common 5 in 1 reflector kits, such as the Glow model below, it will also allow you to diffuse light as well as block unwanted light. Sets such as these usually come with the selection of covers pictured below. With a 5 in 1 you usually get either gold, sunlight or a zebra pattern of gold and silver in addition to white, silver, diffusion and black.
Glow Portable 5 in 1 42″ Reflector Kit
Diffusion
Diffusion is useful to cut the light hitting your subject and leads to a flatter light when held further away from the light source. Silver and gold are highly reflective with silver giving your subject a cooler look and gold giving you a warmer look. Black is used to take light away from an area of your subject as black absorbs light. If you are looking for a natural look I would shy away from pure gold as it can often be overpowering and give your subject too much of a golden hue. I recommend getting a set with a zebra patterned gold and silver.
Fill-In Shadows
Reflectors are truly useful, especially in controlled environments. They can be used as fill light replacements or just to give a kick of light where you need it. Reflectors are most often used to fill in shadows from a hard directional light. They are also useful to separate your subject from the background and can be used to light the back of your subject as a hair light would. Once you have one you will find it incredibly useful.
A 5 in 1 kit is a great starter reflector and it is very portable. I would suggest you get a smaller one to start, somewhere in the 30 – 40” (76.2 – 101.6cm) range as the larger models are quite difficult for one person or your model to manage. This model has the gold/silver zebra pattern that I prefer over the full gold pattern.
Beware of wind!
If you are using a reflector on a windy day the reflector will become a sail and try to fly away. When an assistant is not an option (your husband, wife, significant other or 8-year old daughter may have only so much patience) a stand with clamps and a sandbag can work to hold the reflector in place. I am going to show the most ironic video possible below to hammer home the point to always use a sandbag. If you are using a stand, a sandbag can not only keep the whole setup from falling on your subject, potentially injuring them, it can also keep your stand and reflector from flying off like a giant lawn dart. When handled carefully, the benefits are definitely noticeable and can make a big impact on the final image, but always take precautions to minimize risk.
Surrounded by sandbags, they forget to sandbag the C stand!
Controlling Shadows
In order to show some real world examples, I went out into a park with no assistant and no model, just me, my camera on a tripod and my phone as a shutter release. The first picture is without any reflector with the sun strongly hitting the right side of my face. In the second image, I am holding the reflector myself with the silver side angled to fill in the shadows. In the third picture, I asked a passerby to hold the diffuse part of the reflector kit so that it was softening the light that was hitting me from the sun. You can see the flatness of the light versus the harshness of the first image. I didn’t retouch these images at all. And yes, I do have resting grumpy face.
Packing it up
You will notice when you open the pouch that the reflector comes in that the reflector is folded in on itself and that the frame is quite springy, popping open without any effort. Once you are done using it though you may struggle to figure out how to get it back in its bag. On photography shoots with brand new assistants this is usually very fun to watch.
Once you have done this a few times it will become second nature.
