Is a Soft Box Really Necessary?

R

rickaction

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A little background about me: I am a beginning videographer and am extremely frugal having spent a pretty decent amount obtaining this kit:

1 Mole Richardson Baby 1K
2 Mole Richardson Tweenie II 650W
2 Mole Richardson 200W (250W when in use)
2 60W Industrial Clamp Lights
4 Small Fluorescent Battery Powered Lights
2 Homemade Fluorescent "Kino Flo" 400W Lights
1 ColorTran Nook Light.
1 China Ball
1 24x32 Net Single
1 24x32 Net Double
1 5x1 Reflector
2 Gobo Arms
2 Gobo Heads
Scrims, Stands, etc..

w/ GH2 Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and Panasonic 20mm f/1.7

I am about to shoot a feature on the red/f3/af100 (budget is pending) for a friend who has hired me (despite me having shot one decent looking short and telling him he should use his money to rent a good DP). While I was shooting the short, it took a lot of time to correctly set up the shots for the lighting per location, and required a lot of patience, planning and shot revisions. However, the feature I am starting to work on is running on a low-low budget and as they say time=money.

I have been reading a lot on these forums and watching videos where people use softbox methods almost singularly saying it is easier to set up, looks better and there are no shadows. I however, feel like softboxes flatten the image and makes it look too jarring. I have used soft boxes before, but mainly to diffuse the intense shadows I am getting in the background. It seems like a lot of people are using softboxes today and I know that everyone says "There is no right way to light a scene," but I guess what I am asking is is it worth it to purchase a softbox kit from chimera or buy a 650-1K softbox light from arri/mole-richardson?

My beginning style of lighting is very noire with harsh shadows and characters moving in and out of shadows. I do not allow shadows to be seen unless for a particular mood (I feel it's jarring if it's not in black/white). I understand and have seen people getting similar, if not better, effects with the kino flo florescent after color balancing, but kino is way too expensive for me (the ones I built work fine but I dont have a tripod mount, often I just hang them). I have heard my friends talking about setting up similar shots with relative ease with the softboxes, saying that it took care of the problem with background shadows instead of having to put up nets (as I have been practicing) but I have never seen them do this in person.

I understand that this question seems extremely off the wall, and that there are many answers, but that is the point. I want to hear what you guys have to say. I am fairly sure in the future I will need to have at least one softbox (probably two), but I want to know, before I go start filming this feature, if I should grab one or two, if it saves time in setting up shots, and if it doesn't look like the flat crap a lot of "expert" dps on youtube seem to love to shoot.
 
Softboxes can be cumbers some but they do have a use on the set. For speed just set-up a c-stand with an arm extended at 90 degrees and hand a large (close to 4x4) sheet of diffusion in front of the light. That way you get a huge softbox effect and don't have to deal with the softbox being front heavy on the light's yoke.
 
No, it's definitely not absolutely necessary. The reasons why softboxes are just a little bit easier to work with is because they allow you to set up a soft source and have all the spill be contained within the box, no need to set floppies or other flags to cut the spill, it's definitely faster. However, they're quite expensive and when you have a softbox, you just have a softbox, nothing else. However, if you were to get a 4x4 frame, a floppy or two, with a couple of c-stands, you'd come out to roughly the same price as a chimera softbox, but then you have c-stands, floppies, and a 4x4 frame....things you could use for other applications.

Soft light does tend to wrap around peoples faces a bit more, but I wouldn't say it flattens out the image so much. If you're not getting enough contrast with your softbox, you can always try setting a flag on the opposite side to act as negative fill.

I think a 2k softlight might actually be a great idea. You won't get a light that's quite as soft, but it's a very quick and easy way to get a nice soft light...they're a little hard to pack, but you get over it quick.

Good luck on your movie.
 
Softboxes are great for tabletop product. They're decent for head & shoulders interviews.

Thing is, the size of 'em is just too small for much else. Sure, you can point 'em anywhere, but once you get a couple feet from them, they get fairly hard - at 10 feet they're barely soft anymore.

For soft light on a room, for some soft fill... I find you're much better off hanging some diffuse fabric (and it can be something from the fabric store, not necessarily scrim fabric) and lighting through it with an open face. You can even take 10' of conduit or PVC, two c-stands, and make a "soft box" that's 10 feet square.

Roger Deakins (Most Coen Bros. flicks) is a bounce-guy. Essentially the same thing - make a really big rectangle of soft light. He loves unbleached muslin which adds a touch of warmth. He just tapes it to walls, etc., and has written often about "running into a dept. store" and grabbing bed sheets during a shoot.

The "flat crap" from a softbox will only be an issue in closeups or medium shots - they're just too small to effectively light much of a scene with. Bounce or light-through-it diffusion gives you total control of the size of the soft source. Look at your scene, imagine what's motivating the light, and if you need an area (or entire set) of soft light, you can quickly figure out how large of a "lit panel" you need and create it. And for noir-ish stuff? There's nothing like a 10' tall by 1-foot wide soft source to just sort of kiss a figure with some soft light - add a hard rim or back and it's killllerrrrr.

While you're at the fabric store, get maybe two pieces of black felt or similar, 3 yards long by 3-4' wide. You can hang that from a c-stand & arm to kill any spill, basically making a softbox that's as huge as you need. This is just cheap as hell, too. Go to filmtools.com and order a few pieces of 5/8 aluminum in 3 and 4 ft. lengths, and you can make all sorts of quick frames for your fabric.

That's just my .02, but I learned it shooting fashion for decades. Works for me. And I do have 5 or 6 softboxes and use them for stuff like beverage cans and soft goods.
 
A softbox is just a convenient way to get a relatively large luminous surface to light your subject. You can get that same large source in other ways, such as a beadboard bounce, or an open frame with diffusion gel. I use walls, tabletops, shirts, show cards, all kinds of surfaces to bounce soft light from.

As you know, the virtue, if you see it that way, of light sources that are large compared to their subjects, such as 2'X3' within a few feet of a face, is that they cast soft shadows. Soft shadows are flattering, they make skin and facial features look smoother. Large soft sources can still cast shadows supplying some modeling or shape to the face, but need to work from the side, not directly from the front of the face.

You apparently don't like soft sources on the lens axis because you don't like the flatness. Fine, but go grab a copy of a fashion and beauty magazine such as Glamour and look at how those beautiful faces are lit. Very often the lighting is soft and from the front of the face, slightly high, casting a soft symmetrical shadow just beneath the nose. Often the sources are 8' or more tall. Ask your actresses how they want to be lit.

Back to softboxes. What's handy about them is that they contain the globe and prevent spill from filling the room behind and to the sides of their front face, which is the real source of the light reaching the subject. All the other methods mentioned above require setting multiple flags to control that spill. And another thing, softboxes are a lot more useful if you purchase egg crate grids for the front of them. These grids are like a whole lot of little barndoors. They cut down the quantity of light from the softbox but they do a lot to direct the light forward and decrease spill off to the sides. I wouldn't own a softbox without one.

Once again, flagging off spill from one of the other methods of supplying a soft source means you will have to set one or more flags, say to keep your source from illuminating a wall as well as your subjects, and the larger the source the larger the flags need to be and the farther from the source to do a good job. It is very common to use a 4'X4' solid floppy providing a wall 4' wide and 8' tall in order to keep light from a bounce or open frame (or softbox without an egg crate grid) from going where you don't want it.

So, softbox? An expensive but useful solution if you like soft light and respectable control of spill. But the other ways of producing soft light look just as good, generally cost less and use grip that has other uses as well, making that method more versatile.

I'm a gaffer with my own kit. I light all kinds of stuff. I have a number of softboxes with grids. I don't use them a whole lot, mostly preferring other methods to produce and control soft light but I wouldn't get rid of them either, they are useful tools.
 
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What he (MC) said. I often set up two stands with Mafers on top and put a 10' piece of 1" steel conduit between them in a goal post rig. I hang fabric store muslin from that and generally use it as bounce, say with a couple of 650 fresnels flooded out and playing off it. Very smooth, very nice. Actors can walk past this wall of light and stay evenly lit for more than 10' Try that any other way.
 
Man....I hope this thread grows with more ideas like these. Thanks.

Would love to see pictures of setups like these.
 
I rarely use Chimeras anymore. I mostly use 4x4 frames with different diffusion or bead board bounce. I like the frame route because I can keep 6 or seven different types of diffusion skinned and change them very fast. Just today I was staring at a stack of Chimeras and thinking "I should get rid of those things".
 
I really like softboxes because you can slap a grid or louvers on them very quickly to control spill. But they are definitely large and unwieldy and difficult to move around. I have some Photoflex Starlites and the Small and Medium sizes are pretty easy to move around, but I hardly ever use the large one now... too cumbersome. The look is beautiful though!
 
Love this thread mainly cause I learned to light in an environment that was very much geared toward headshot interviews using softboxes & I love reading about techniques that are different than what I know. Is there a particular brand of 4x4 frame you guys are using & if so, why?
 
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ethan cooper said:
Love this thread mainly cause I learned to light in an environment that was very much geared toward headshot interviews using softboxes & I love reading about techniques that are different than what I know. Is there a particular brand of 4x4 frame you guys are using & if so, why?
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Norms or Modern are the best for the price.
 
Most frames are home-made. Either 1x2 lumber or conduit. Lumber is good as you can staple stuff to it if you need to be quick and don't want to use up all of your clamps, attach at corners with bolts and wing nuts for easy breakdown. For light weight you can go 1/2" pvc plumbing pipe and 90 degree elbows, friction fit should be fine or glue one side. Steel electrical conduit has fittings that screw on. Visit your local big box hardware store and look around.
 
Do you guys really use homemade frames? I've never seen one before..honestly I'd just go for the real thing. Theyre only 50 bucks, It's worth it.
 
thanks for the leads on frames. homemade isn't really the route I'd like to go but neither is the $520 options for the Matthews road rags 2 pack on Bee & Aitch.
 
I make frames from electrical conduit (metal) from home depot or lowes, whatever. They sell the metal corners, so it takes about five minutes to set up a butterfly in what ever size you need, just cut some standard lengthes, 4x6x. Then as many others suggested, joanne fabrics, buy some muslin, then every six inches or so, cut a slit, then add a brass loupe, to tie a string through. you can buy the kit to add the brass loupes for like five bucks. the poupes are the same you see on a blue tarp. So for 25.00 you can make a professional looking and working 6x6 butterfly.
 
Thank you, thank you guys. I have been reading all the responses and they all have really helped me shape a better understanding of using a soft light. I really appreciate all the help from the pros :). You guys are really awesome.
 
Softboxes provide great light but usually indoor restrictions make it completely useless. Kino and LEDs are way better 90% of the time. That's the sad reality! :P
 
Pietro Impagliazzo said:
Softboxes provide great light but usually indoor restrictions make it completely useless. Kino and LEDs are way better 90% of the time. That's the sad reality! :P
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Horses for courses. I've lit plenty of indoor scenes and interviews with softboxes & they worked just fine. Your statement about florescents and LED's holds true in cramped quarters but the quality of light coming from all these sources is different & that must be taken into account.

I'm a huge fan of LED's due to their size, weight, low heat output & ability to be run off batteries but almost always prefer the quality of light that either softboxes or florescents produce.
 
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