Softness/hardness of Various Light Sources
Most light sources have a non-negligible size and therefore exhibit the properties of a soft light to some degree. Even the sun does not cast perfectly hard shadows.
In "hard" light sources, the parallelism of the rays is an important factor in determining shadow behaviour.
The quality of light can be altered by using diffusion gel or aiming a lighting instrument at diffusing material such as a silk. When shooting outdoors, cloud cover provides nature's version of a softbox.
Read more about this topic: Soft Light
Famous quotes containing the words softness, hardness, light and/or sources:
“The little lifting helplessness, the queer
Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.
And makes a curse.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)