Softening the light

Photographic lighting is really unknown territory for me so this part of the course was particularly intriguing and I approached it very warily wondering what kind of equipment I might need.

The first part here was an exercise in softening the light. I chose a single object for the still life and used a fabric softbox as the diffused light source.

P377: f5.6 @ 1/4  ISO 100 22mm



The lighting direction for P377 was a naked light overhead pointing downwards with the soft box at the side to the left of the jug. There is a distinct shadow.

P378 : f5.6 @ 1/3  ISO 100  22mm



In P378, the naked light and soft box were in the same position but translucent material held between the naked light and object. The  exposure setting is different from P 377. The shadow has almost disappeared and the edges of the object in P378 have a slightly less sharp appearance. There is more contrast in the image where there was no translucent material between the naked light and the object. Looking at the two images I'm not sure that diffusion in this instance has improved the second image in any way.