Photography Lighting: What’s the Difference Between a Softbox and Octobox?

Octaboxes for Portraits
While you could say that an octobox is a type of softbox, an octobox offers specific advantages in portrait photography scenarios. Octoboxes have a circular shape that gives portrait subjects a round-shaped shine in their eyes in your final result. This round reflection resembles the sparkle that you’d get from the sun. It feels much more natural than the eye sparkle given off by a softbox, which tends to be square or rectangular.

How Softboxes Work
Softboxes help you to direct and soften your light. Light from a softbox is muted and subdued and has lots of depth; it molds and contours your subject without causing sharp or jarring transitions. Softboxes are often used with a flash, but they are sometimes with system flashes and daylight bulbs. While a flash photograph without a softbox can have sharp shadows and a flat two-dimensional look, a softbox-lit portrait tends to have deeper shadows that can be very dimensional, sculptural and compelling in your prints.

A Matter of Personal Choice
That said, softboxes have a universality that many photographers love. While the octobox has a specific area of expertise (portrait work), softboxes tend to be the workhorse for general photography lighting. Their square or rectangular shapes may not lend themselves to the attractive round reflections that the octobox yields; however, they do quite well with subjects like products, pieces of art and other inanimate objects. The octobox is clearly more complex than the softbox in terms of construction; it is an eight-sided device, while the softbox has four sides. If you do a lot of location work and would like to use your lighting equipment outside of the studio setting, ease of setup and takedown is a consideration. In this way, some softboxes are easier to transport than octoboxes. The best way to determine which device is a fit for you is by trying them out. Consider borrowing a friend’s gear or renting one of each to see the results firsthand. When you’re ready to buy, consider a lighting kit to help save money while outfitting yourself with all the gear you’ll need.Do you prefer the results of an octobox over a softbox for portraiture?
-Backdrop Express Photography Team
Interested in learning more about studio lighting tools? Check out: Improving Your Lighting with a Reflector!
Trackback from your site.