The Complete Handbook of Softboxes

Chapter 1: Understanding Softboxes

A softbox is a light modifier, but that phrase understates what it does. It is a controlled environment for a flash head or continuous lamp, designed to convert a small, intense point of light into a larger, softer, more predictable source. To understand why this matters, you have to consider what makes a light source look the way it does, and that is determined almost entirely by two things: the apparent size of the source, and its distance from the subject.

Take a bare flash on a stand, pointed at a person's face. The flash tube is perhaps one inch across. From three feet away, that source is tiny, so the light it produces is harsh. The transition between highlight and shadow is abrupt and sharp, which is why bare flashes are commonly described as "hard" light. Now imagine mounting that same flash inside a softbox with a two-foot face. The light that hits the subject is no longer coming from a single point. It is coming from every point on that two-foot surface. The effective source is now huge, and the shadows become far less defined. The transition from light to dark is gradual, and the specular highlights on skin or glossy products are much broader and softer. This is not a matter of taste. It is geometry and physics. The softbox simply gives you a way to manipulate that geometry.

The softbox accomplishes this through a combination of reflective interior walls, internal baffles, and