Studio Equipment

Soft boxes

A soft box is an enclosure around a bulb, which is a type of photographic lighting device. Soft boxes are used to bounce light off a surface to defuse light. It can be used as either a continuous light source or a flash. Once positioned correctly, using a soft box can reduce shadow and give more light to the photographing subject.




Beauty dish

A beauty dish focuses give light towards a focal point using a parabolic reflector. It is mainly used in portrait photography in which the photographers use by pointing the dish downwards onto the model to bring out the models bone structures as well as the facial features, which also creates a nice shadow to distract unwanted skin flaws.







Flash sync
Flash sync is the synchronizing of the firing of the flash with the opening of the shutter. Flash firing too late or the shutter speed being too high causes a dark line of shadow at the bottom of the screen, to stop this happening the shutter speed has to be correct, but not too low which will cause the photograph to be over exposed because too much light is being let in.

Reflectors
Reflectors are used to reflect light onto your model or object you are photographing. This can be one of two, natural light or artificial light.


Backdrops

A backdrop is a usually piece of material hung, but can be anything that can be used to enhance the look of a photograph, and is used as a background of a photograph, in studio photography backdrops are usually black or white but can be any colour you choose or can also feature images. To create a nice image using a backdrop you must make sure that the backdrop and the lighting are working well together. These are usually used in a studio or outdoors.