Diffuser
I guess the name says most of it: shoot through umbrella! It is a light modifier that you shoot through to diffuse and soften the light. It really looks like a white umbrella. A shoot through us opposed to umbrellas with reflectors on the inside, where they reflect the light rather than letting it through.
I guess professionals with a studio don’t use umbrellas as they have softboxes and beautyboxes and the like that is much better at directing the light where it is needed.
However, don’t write off a shoot through umbrella just yet! First of all it is very inexpensive, secondly it folds down to taking almost no space in your camera bag and thirdly it yields some beautiful light. The reason the light is so beautiful is that it is soft – the umbrella makes the light source much bigger than the head of the flash, and as you probably know: beautiful soft light is all about getting a very large light source very close to your subject. And an umbrella can help with both! Don’t be afraid to move the umbrella close to your subject – you will love the effect!
Off camera flash
An umbrella requires that you have an off camera flash. Otherwise you will be pointing the lens straight into the umbrella, and there is not much point to that way of working! So in the image above you can see my Godox flash is mounted on a stand that also holds the umbrella. Not a camera in sight.
The flash and the camera talks to each other via a radio transmitter mounted on the top of my camera in the hot shoe. You can also make the flash go off camera via a long cable, but I find it so much more enjoyable to work with a radio transmitted signal. So if your budget allows, consider a radio controlled flash and a transmitter to match.
Flash zoom and umbrella distance
One tip to get the most out of the umbrella: adjust the focus of the flash so that it uses the entire umbrella. In the example above, you can see that I have only used the centre part of the umbrella. You can either move the umbrella further away (until you reach the end of the arm!) or you can adjust the zoom on the lens to go wider.
Umbrellas comes in different sizes. If it is not a problem for your camera bag, I would recommend large rather than small. You have probably guessed why: it makes the potential lightsource as big as possible = soft light. You can always zoom in to make use of only the centre of the umbrella if that is to your liking. The other way around is more complicated!
