Different Key Light Modifiers and How I Use Them for Portraits

Big softbox, little softbox, umbrella, or beauty dish? When choosing a key light modifier for your portraits, it can be daunting to decide which one is the best for the job. I've been working as a portrait photographer for 19 years, so in this article, I'll take you through the modifiers I grab most often for shoots and explain what each one does and the best scenarios to use them.

Choosing a Key Light Modifier

When choosing a key light modifier, there are a few variables you want to keep in mind to guide your decision. Do you want the light to be soft or hard? The shadows minimal and muted or harsh and edgy? How much of the key light do you want to spill onto your background? What kind of lighting would best flatter your subject's face? Have the answers to these questions ready before you slap a modifier onto your light, and while you're shooting, make sure the modifier you chose is helping you reach your goals for the photo.

The 24 x 36" Softbox

Let's jump right in with the key light modifier I use the most often: my 24" x 36" softbox. It's portable, flattering to most faces, and easy to move around a subject to change the amount and quality of the shadows.

It throws a minimum amount of light onto the background, depending on how far away the subject is from the background, and if you add a grid to the softbox, it will concentrate the light into an even tighter field and minimize spill light onto the background or elsewhere. You can see here that I can still create some depth with shadows while keeping the light on my face soft and flattering. In this photo, the key light is placed just to the right of the camera, and placing it more forward or right over the camera would fill in those shadows on the side of my face.

I use this for in-studio and on-location headshots and portraits the most because of its versatility to create an image that feels light and airy or dark and moody, depending on its placement. Here's that same softbox, but centered directly in front of the subject and with a white reflective bounce underneath:

The 60" Octabox

The rule of thumb is the bigger the modifier, the wider its spread of light. And comparing the 24 x 36" softbox to the 60" octabox at double the size, you can see immediately that the light goes further.

The octabox was placed just as far to the side as the smaller softbox (just on the other side of my face), but it fills in more shadows on the side of my face away from the light. It also extends further down my body and lights more of my arms and spills more onto the background.

I use the 60" octabox mostly in the studio and less on location, unless I know the location will have enough room and high enough ceilings for me to be able to move it around to where I want it. It works best when you're photographing more than just someone's face and need the light to also fall onto their body for waist-up, knees-up, or full-body portraits. And just like the smaller softbox, you can also get a grid to put over it to better control the spill if you want to keep more light off the background.

The 22" Silver Beauty Dish

Now let's go in the opposite direction and choose something smaller and harsher. Here's a 22" high output silver beauty dish with no diffusion:

The light is narrower and harsher, and the shadows are sharper, which means I had to try out many poses to find just the right angle for it to hit my face without the shadows overwhelming me and making me look ghoulish. The light coming from a silver beauty dish finds every wrinkle, blemish, and imperfection, so I had to retouch this photo to high heaven in order to keep myself from hating it. I do not use this option for headshots and portraits of anyone over 25 years old who doesn't have perfect skin, because you end up with way more photos with unflattering angles until you find one that works. That really narrows down its application to high fashion beauty portraits and macro close-ups like this one:

The 22" Silver Beauty Dish With Diffusion

Adding a single diffusion sock over the silver beauty dish softens and scatters the light to spread a little beyond the narrow beam of the dish. The light that hits the skin gets softer and more closely matches the quality of light coming from the 24x36" softbox, but since it's a smaller modifier, we're still getting sharper lines at the edges of the shadows. This makes it great for flattering portraits where you want some drama with sharp sculpting in the cheekbones and jawline to make them look strong and striking.

The 22" White Beauty Dish

Can you tell the difference between the 22" silver beauty dish with diffusion and the 22" white beauty dish? Yeah, me neither. It's subtle, so the two have essentially the same uses. The white beauty dish is more popular than the silver for most headshots and portraits because it achieves that classic beauty look that it's named for with the effect of those gorgeous old Hollywood portraits of movie stars from the 1930s with one light and no other modifiers.

The 22" White Beauty Dish With Double Diffusion

Since the single layer of diffusion did a magic trick with a silver beauty dish and made it as soft as a softbox, let's see what two layers of diffusion do to the white beauty dish:

Adding heavy diffusion to the white beauty dish enhances that spread of the light onto the background and into the nooks and crannies of the shadows to still maintain a lot of those shadows but soften their edges. Now the light is just as sculpting to a person's face shape while being more flattering and filling in some smaller lines and wrinkles. It also gives the skin a glowing effect, which is awesome if that's what you're looking for, but can look a little artificial or a little too much like a vintage glamour photo.

The 24" Small Shoot-Through Umbrella

Let's stay small for a minute but instead of using a beauty dish with diffusion, where the light bounces off the metal dish behind the strobe and then shoots through a layer of diffusion, throw our light directly through the diffusion without a back. Here's a small shoot-through umbrella:

Ok, lots to unpack here. Let's ignore the change in color temperature on this one, though it is something you need to watch for when going through any layers of diffusion with a modifier since not all diffusion fabric is the same and I've had many umbrellas and softboxes and loose panels of diffusion change color over time to become cooler or warmer as their color fades.

The shadows on my face are pretty harsh, and the light isn't terribly soft, but it's also spilling quite a bit onto the background when compared to a beauty dish of the same size that has more control over where the light goes.

A small shoot-through umbrella mimics the light of a bright sunny day, where the sun is far enough away to light everything while casting harsh shadows behind the subject. It could work well for a green screen photo where your subject needs to look like they've been photographed outside in the sun. Watch your highlights when using this option: you don't get as much variation between shadows and highlights, so it's easy to blow out your highlights with a shoot-through umbrella.

The 51" Parabolic Light Modifier or PLM Umbrella

A PLM combines several qualities of all the previous modifiers and is pretty similar to the look of the 60" octabox. I tend to use this PLM when photographing portraits on location where I know I'll need to light more of a person's whole body with light that mimics window light or generally looks like natural light. It works great on location for this purpose because it's more portable than the large octabox and can be lighter and easier to maneuver. Something to look out for is height, though. The larger the modifier, the higher you need the ceilings to be. This is so you can get the modifier's sweet spot high enough to light a person's face in the most flattering way without the light looking like it's coming from too low.

The 86" Parabolic Light Modifier or PLM Umbrella

If you have a studio space large enough to whip out this monster, this is what you'll get:

The 86" PLM is great for really mimicking the look of diffused natural light through a window, where the light falls softly on the subject from head to toe while also spilling considerably onto the background. It's 7 feet wide, though, so if you have standard 9-foot ceilings your subject has to be sitting on a pretty low chair to get the center of the light at least a foot higher than their face.

Which Key Light Modifier Is Best?

The best key light modifier for portraits depends on the portrait. If you want more drama and more shadows, go with something smaller like a beauty dish or small umbrella. If you want softer, fuller light that mimics the flattering light from a window, go big or go home with a large octabox or a huge PLM.

Always experiment because every modifier has its strengths and weaknesses for what you're attempting to achieve. Your job as a portrait photographer is to shape light and shadow, and just like a carpenter has different tools for building a house, we have different tools for making people look good on camera.