The Difference Between “Hard” Light & Soft Light And When To Use Each

The Difference Between “Hard” Light & Soft Light And When To Use Each

by William Lulow

Many photographers use SOFT LIGHT for their photographs often without knowing what it is and how they can use it to produce the images they want.

First of all, let’s look at what SOFT LIGHT is NOT! What exactly, is HARD LIGHT, its opposite? We sometimes call it HARD LIGHT because of all the shadows it creates and the dramatic quality of it. Here are a couple of examples:

Look at this image. It is lit from one direction, bottom, camera right. It created kind of horrific shadows without much detail. It was made for a poster on crime and the lighting was intentionally set up to make the image as dramatic as possible. This could be called “HARD LIGHT” if you wished. It’s just a dramatic light made with one light which always makes for deep shadows and does not show much information.

Here’s another one:

If you light a subject with only one light it will result in a HARD LIGHT which will be very dramatic and have lots of shadow areas. This can be very useful in creating a “mood,” for instance but it wouldn’t be good for showing much information. here is yet another example with some definite shadow areas used to make the image fit in with other dramatic ones on a company’s website:

This picture was lit with only one light used directly (not bounced or diffused). There was also a second light to provide a gradient background.

A SOFT LIGHT, on the other hand, should be something opposite from this. In other words, an image where the light is more an “overall” kind of light that produces lots of detail and no harsh shadows. Here’s a good example of such a light:

This image was made on an obviously overcast day (it was actually raining and you can see how low the clouds were). There are no really dark shadows except in areas which were further away from the camera, and there was no direct sunlight. So, cloudy days usually make for softer lighting. The main reason for this is that the cloud cover is helping to DIFFUSE the light from the sun. DIRECT sunlight will cause harsh shadows:

This image was made with lots of direct sunlight coming from behind the subjects. (It also creates the highlights on nearby objects and the shoulders and hair of the subject.) You can see the shadows on the pavement as well as in objects in the background. But here, the shadows were filled in by the use of a flash head bounced into an umbrella and positioned near the camera. Where the subjects’ faces would be in shadow with light just from the sun, here they are “filled in” by the addition of a light in the front.

What becomes more obvious is that dark shadows are indicators of direct light, no shadows are indicators of soft light. Soft light can be created by shooting on an overcast day with a lot of cloud cover. All light in our world comes from the sun. It is very far away from us (93 million miles) so it is somewhat of a “point light source” because of its distance and brightness. The great distance makes it appear small in comparison to objects on Earth. Whenever light from the sun is direct (that is, not filtered or diffused by clouds) it creates lots of shadows where information cannot be seen.

Soft light is the opposite. When clouds are present, they serve to diffuse the sun’s light rays and make all the shadows somewhat transparent. We can see much of the detail because the contrast between light and shadow is much less. To simulate this effect in a photographic studio with artificial lights, first notice exactly what , clouds do. Yes, they block direct sunlight, but they also create a MUCH LARGER LIGHT SOURCE. They take the sun’s rays and diffuse them by distributing their effect over a much larger area. So SOFT LIGHT comes from a LARGE light source. If you wanted to create a soft light in the studio then, begin with the biggest light you can find. What I found, many years ago, was this:

This an umbrella, lined with a white satin, reflective material (designed to be light reflecting but smooth instead of specular as a shiny piece of aluminum would be) and it has a diameter of 5.5 feet! Think of it compared to the size of a human head. It is many times larger. Because of the size, it will create kind of a soft light, but also note its shape. It is round and concave, so it is actually directing the soft light to whatever subject you might have. If you think of a cloudy day, a solid bank of clouds is enormous compared to objects or people on the ground, so the operative principle is THE LARGER THE LIGHT SOURCE, THE SOFTER THE LIGHTING EFFECT! What I am trying to do here is to simulate this effect. This umbrella is really one of the largest light modifiers I normally use and it’s just for the purpose of making the light as soft as possible. Here is one result from just this type of light:

This image was made with just this large umbrella. Notice there is very little shadow anywhere in the image. The subject is very lit and all information is readily visible. That is because the light is very, very soft. The soft light in this image is directional though, it is coming from camera left. That is because I wanted it to be a little dramatic, but not too much. When I want the light to be very soft but shadowless, You can also discern what types of light modifiers were used by looking at the “catchlights” in the subject’s eyes. Here you can see that one of them was made by my large umbrella. I usually add a FILL-IN light to the arrangement and it creates this effect:

Here, you can see that there is no shadow on the face at all and if you look in the subject’s eyes, you can notice the “catchlights” which are reflections of the lights lighting her, to see their positions. The trick is to surround the face with light. My fill-in light here is also from a SOFT source, a softbox which is another way of diffusing light. It has a baffle inside it and material like the inside of the umbrella to make sure the light is really diffused. That’s the key. Keep the light diffused and much larger than the subject and you will achieve SOFT LIGHT results.

The basic difference between these two types of lightings is that the HARD LIGHT should be used when you want the results to be very dramatic and the SOFT LIGHT should be used when you are trying to convey the most information about your subject, such as in a commercial headshot or a product shot.