We take a look at what these light modifiers are doing to your, well, light.

There’s only so many times that the light from a bare speedlite will carry you through the day. You need to shape, squeeze and wrangle it into doing what the situation dictates.  For this reason there is a whole industry devoted to producing light modifiers, from softboxes, umbrellas, beauty dishes, gridspots, snoots, gels….the list goes on.  In this article we’ll be looking at light modifiers suited to restricting light; things that help us arrange the photons into orderly lines that go exactly where we tell them to.  These fall into two categories of tools: snoots and grids.  In particular the tools we’ll be looking at will be exclusively for use on hot-shoe flashes, which more people own.

Why is restricting light important?  As I mentioned earlier, it’s a photographer’s job to turn light into something usable for the image.  Sometimes the situation doesn’t call for a huge, soft swathe of beauty-enhancing light.  Sometimes it calls for an edgier, more vibrant photo and hard, directed light and its resultant shadows do the job.  Restricted light also has other purposes – it can be used to paint a swatch of light onto a part of the frame that calls for attention, or it can be something as simple as keeping the light from bouncing off the walls of a cramped office that makes these light modifiers a must-have item in your camera bag.

Today I want to take a look at a particular brand of snoots and grids that I have come to swear by due to their durability, lightness and usefulness. They are the perfect choice for those strobists out there who are ready to move on from their cereal box snoots to a more professional looking kit.  These snoots and grids are manufactured by Honl Photo, and are unfortunately not sold in Japan, to the best of my knowledge. Nevertheless they are better than anything I have purchased here. We’ll start with the snoot:

The Snoot:

I don’t have enough praise for this snoot.  It’s actually 3 light modifiers in one, and has many other uses besides.  This snoot is made out of ballistic nylon which makes it tough as nails; it’s impossible to rip, stands up to scrunching, bending and getting wet. Here’s how the light looks with it stuck on my SB-800, with its zoom at 105mm.

The snoot has one black surface and one reflective silver surface and can be used with either surface on the inside. This makes for a subtle difference when shooting – the silver surface on the inside produces soft light fall-off around the circle of light, as can be seen in the shot above.   The black surface on the inside of the snoot eliminates the light fall-off completely.  In addition the snoot can be unfurled to be used as a silver bounce-card that can be attached to the head of the flash to get softer light, kind of like a Lumiquest 20-80.  The paper-clips that you see in the photo of the snoot are things that I sometimes attach to make a really small patch of light, which you can see in the photo below.

These snoots fold flat or slip over your umbrella or light stand, which makes them easy to carry pretty much anywhere. I’ve had several of these for a couple of years and they still look as good as new – and I put my gear through the wringer. If you need one, get one. They won’t let you down. Price:  US$29.99 In the photo below, two snoots were used for each of the subjects.  Snoots keep the light off the background and maintains the a moody atmosphere in dark settings.

The Grids:

Grids differ from snoots in that they produce a much cleaner circle of light.  Honl grids come in two sizes: 1/8″ and 1/4″, which refers to the size of the holes in the grid.  The 1/8″ produces a tighter circle of light, as you can see in the shots below:

1/8″

1/4″

These things attach to the front of the speedlight by use of velcro straps on the side, which can be a little annoying as the grid tends to sag if the straps are not on tightly enough.  As you can see from the shots however, the grid produces a very smooth, circular blob of light, very similar to a spotlight.  Great for picking out faces or portions of a frame. The grids are the size of a decently sized wallet and are made out of tough plastic, and sturdy as hell.

The only downside of these grids is that they produce virtually the same quality of light that you get from a speedlight, albeit with a smaller radius. Nevertheless they are compact and will fit into pretty much any extra space left in your camera bag. Price: US$29.95 In this photo of a buddhist monk, the 1/4″ grid came in useful in illuminating the frieze behind the subject with a soft fall-off, while keeping light off unessential parts of the frame.

There is one more piece of kit that is actually a DIY by myself, copied off something that I saw on Zach Arias’ blog a while back. He called it the ‘darksphere’ and I liked the idea because of the thought that it might make the light source from a speedlight appear almost as big as a strobe head, hence taking away the edge on the shadows that is the hallmark of speedlight light. I purchased all of the parts in Japan and here it is:

I haven’t actually tested it out properly yet, so a full write up on how it works and where to get the parts to build one is coming up soon. More later.