Softboxes are essential lighting accessories in photography that enlarge the light source and create a softer light. By using softboxes, you can achieve natural shadow transitions, eliminate flaws, and capture higher quality and more visually appealing photos. In other words, if you want to capture high-quality images, a softbox is indispensable.

A softbox consists of the reflector cloth, diffuser cloth, wireframe, and the mount, with some including a honeycomb grid. Softboxes come in various shapes and sizes, including square/rectangular, octagonal, deep parabolic, and spherical/lantern softboxes, ranging from as small as 40cm to over 2 meters. Every shape and size of softboxes create a different lighting effect, so it's important to know about softboxes under different shooting scenarios.

Creating Depth with Rectangular Softboxes

Rectangular softboxes, also known as square/rectangular softboxes, generally come in regular or narrow rectangular softboxes. They are commonly used as fill lights and can also be used as rim lights to outline subjects. When used vertically, they complement the body light in portrait photography and provide side lighting to create depth. Horizontally, they can be used as background lights or catchlights.

NEEWER SF6090Q (60 x 90cm) and SF30120Q (30 x 120cm) rectangular quick-setup softboxes offer easy installation and portability, suitable for portrait and still-life photography, as well as video streaming. By enlarging and diffusing the light, these softboxes create even illumination, softening the texture, eliminating spots and shadows, and enhancing the skin's smoothness and translucency. The included honeycomb grid and diffuser cloth help shape the light for contouring, resulting in a more three-dimensional look.

Octagonal Softboxes: A Must-Have for Photography Studios

Compared to rectangular softboxes, octagonal softboxes offer a wider light spread, perfectly used as main lights or top lights in a background setting. The refraction of light within the octagonal modifier creates a unique visual effect, casting a natural halo around the subject's upper body and creating heavier shadows on the background. Octagonal softboxes make the skin appear cleaner, free of impurities, and produce beautiful catchlights. Ideal for seated, leaning, or half-body portraits, and essential for professional photography studios.
NEEWER offers octagonal softboxes such as SF-RPBO26 (65cm) and SF-3232 (80cm) with a uniform silver coating, significantly increasing light reflection, expanding and diffusing light to create more even and saturated illumination. With two included diffuser cloths, the octagonal shape ensures uniform light coverage compared to other shapes of the same diameter.

Deep Parabolic Softboxes: The Portraits King

The deep parabolic translucent softbox, also known as the "The Portraits King," is undoubtedly the perfect lighting tool for capturing portrait photographs. This is due to its deep design, which allows light to bounce multiple times inside the box, resulting in remarkable softness and uniformity when combined with the diffusing fabric. The light produced is concentrated, creating beautiful catchlights and adding a sense of texture to the photos. It is suitable for shooting fashion portraits that emphasize the subject's contours, ideal for portrait photography and video shooting.

NEEWER offers a wide range of sizes for the deep parabolic softboxes such as SF55Q (55cm), SF65Q (65cm), SF85Q (85cm), and SF120Q (120cm). They all feature a quick setup design, allowing for easy installation, equipped with 16 high-elastic umbrella ribs that can withstand thousands of bends for durability, and together with the included grid for convenient light shaping.
With the quick setup design, you simply need to pull the support rod upwards until it clicks into place that indicates the successful installment of the softboxes. To remove it, pull up the support rod, simultaneously press the lock button, and then release the support rod. This allows for easy disassembly without the need for any tools. Furthermore, the softbox is foldable and weighs only 1.5kg, convenient to carry in the provided portable bag for outdoor shoots.
Tips: The deep design of the softbox allows for more refraction within the box, making it "light-hungry" compared to other softboxes. Therefore, it requires a more powerful light source to achieve optimal results.

Lantern-Style Softboxes to Imitate Natural Light

The lantern-style softbox creates a diffused light that transforms the original point light source into a spherical light source. It provides a 360° illumination, similar to natural light, great for creating even fill light in indoor settings.

NEEWER NS50L, NS65L, and NS90L Lantern-Style Softboxes feature an integrated design, allowing for quick setup, highly convenient to use. With the latch installation, where you simply need to place the softbox vertically on the ground, align it with the latch, and press down to secure it. The entire process takes only 2 seconds. These softboxes are available in sizes of 50cm, 65cm, and 90cm, and they come with a skirt that allows for flexible control of light shape and direction, catering to various lighting needs in different scenarios.
In addition to photographic lighting, lantern-style softboxes are widely used in live streaming and short videos, especially when a uniform lighting environment is required for live broadcasts. By combining a lantern-style softbox with high-power studio lights, you can create a consistently bright and evenly lit space. In some cases, to showcase product details more effectively, a comprehensive arrangement of lights can be used to achieve a "shadowless effect."

Summary

In practical photography, it is often necessary to use a combination of different softbox types to create partitioned lighting and achieve the desired lighting effects, thus elevating the quality of photos and videos to a higher level.