Reflector

A reflector is any surface you use to bounce light that is already there back onto your subject, usually into the shadows. It matters because the hardest part of shooting in sun or by a window is not the bright side of a face but the dark side, and a reflector is the simplest way to control that side: you can see the effect with your own eyes before you press the shutter.

It needs no power and makes no light of its own. A collapsible disc, a sheet of white foam board, a pale wall, a sunlit pavement or a field of snow all do the same job. What changes from one to the next is the surface, and the surface decides almost everything about the light you get.

A reflector is a second light whose quality is set by its surface

The one idea that explains every reflector choice is this: once light hits the reflector, the reflector becomes a new light source, and its surface decides what kind of source it is.

• A shiny surface (silver, gold, a mirror) holds a copy of the light that hits it. Point a silver reflector at the sun and it sends back a beam that behaves like a second sun: hard edged, nearly as bright as direct sunlight, and going in exactly one direction. The angle the light arrives at equals the angle it leaves at, so you have to aim it.
• A matte surface (white) scatters light in every direction. A white panel in sun glows evenly, like a window. The light it gives is soft, because the source is as large as the panel, and weaker, because most of what it bounces goes somewhere other than your subject. It needs no precise aim.
• A black surface sends almost nothing back. It is not really a reflector. It works by taking away light that the surroundings were bouncing into the shadows, which is called negative fill.

From that model the practical rules fall out on their own. Silver is bright and hard and has to be pointed. White is gentle and forgiving. Gold is silver with a warm color. And distance does different things to each, which is where most of the confusion about reflectors comes from.

What distance does to silver and to white

Many guides say that moving a reflector closer makes the light harder. For a white reflector that is backwards. A white panel is a light source in its own right, and like any source it gets softer when it is closer, because it then fills more of the subject’s view. Read hard versus soft light for why size relative to distance sets softness.

White fill also fades quickly as you step the panel back. The table below shows how much of the direct sunlight a white panel 1 meter across sends to the shadow side of a face at different distances.

Two things stand out. First, a white panel has to be close to do much: at 2 m it adds only a twentieth of the sunlight, which is hard to see next to the skylight already in the shadows. Second, the steps are steep: going from 0.5 m to 1 m costs more than a stop. That is close to the inverse square law, which would predict 2 stops for each doubling of distance. Close up the loss is smaller, about 1.3 stops from 0.5 m to 1 m, because a large panel near the face does not behave like a point; from 1 m to 2 m it is already about 1.8 stops.

Silver behaves differently. The sun is so far away that its light arrives in parallel rays, and a flat mirror sends them on still parallel. The bright patch a silver reflector throws stays about as bright at 3 m as at 1 m. The sun is only about half a degree wide, so the patch from a perfectly flat mirror grows by roughly 9 mm for every meter of distance. Its edge stays hard at any distance. Stepping a silver reflector back does not dim it much; it just makes it harder to keep the patch on the face. Collapsible silver fabric is wrinkled, which spreads the beam a little and softens its edge, but the behavior is the same in kind.

So if fill from silver is too strong, do not walk it back. Tilt it so only the edge of the beam touches the face, switch to white, or use the white side at a distance where the table says it gives what you want.

The surfaces, and when each one earns its place

White

Soft, neutral fill that you barely notice. White is the safest surface in hard sun because it cannot blind your subject, and the safest close to a face because it softens as it comes nearer. Use it first, and change only when white is not enough.

Silver

The brightest fill you can get from a reflector, with a crisp, specular quality that adds sparkle to eyes and to shiny things like glass and metal. Silver is the surface that can work as the key light, not only as fill, for example lighting the face of a subject who has the sun behind them. Its weakness is the same as its strength: a beam close to the strength of the sun, aimed at someone’s eyes, makes them squint.

Gold

A shiny surface with a warm cast, so it behaves like silver but adds warmth, as if the fill came from late sun. It helps in open shade, where the light is blue, and on cool overcast days. In light that is already warm, such as golden hour, it pushes skin toward orange. Some kits have a striped silver and gold surface, sold as zebra or sunfire, which gives a gentler warmth than pure gold. If you will correct color later, remember that a gold reflector puts two color temperatures in one frame, and white balance can only neutralize one of them.

Black

Black deepens shadows instead of filling them. Outdoors, grass, sand and pale walls all bounce light into the shadow side, so a face can look flatter than you want. A black panel on that side blocks that bounce and gives the face shape back. A black panel used to block light from reaching part of the scene is called a flag.

Translucent

The center of a five in one kit is a translucent panel. It is not a reflector at all but a diffuser: held between the sun and the subject, it turns hard sun into soft light. Many photographers use the diffuser for the main light and a white reflector for the fill.

Where to hold a reflector

The rule is not “opposite the light”. It is: find the shadows you want to change, then put the reflector where light can hit it and bounce into them. That gives a few standard positions.

• Sun or window to one side. Stand the reflector on the far side of the subject, angled back toward the face. This is the classic setup for window light portraits, where a white board just out of frame turns a half-dark face into a gently shaped one.
• Sun behind the subject. The sun lights the hair and shoulders, and the face is in shade. Put the reflector in front, low and to one side of the camera, angled up into the face. Silver here can be bright enough to be the main light on the face; white gives a softer, quieter fill. This keeps the rim light and adds a face. Without it you must choose: expose for the face and let the bright background blow out, or expose for the background and let the face fall toward a silhouette.
• Overcast sky or open shade. The light comes from above, so the eye sockets and the area under the chin go dark. Hold the reflector flat at waist height, or have the subject hold it in their lap, to bounce light up under the brows. This is the most useful single trick in open shade.
• Hard sun overhead. Use white, not silver, from below and in front. Silver from low down in hard sun throws a strong light upward into the face, the look of a face lit by a campfire, and makes people squint.

To find the spot, do not trust geometry; watch the subject. Tilt the reflector slowly while you look at the shadow side of the face. With silver you will see a bright patch slide across; with white you will see the whole shadow side lift and fall. Stop where it looks right, then check the eyes.

If you want to plan a setup before a shoot, the lighting setup diagram tool draws a top-down plan of subject, camera and lights in your browser; add a fill light where the reflector will stand and download the plan as a picture.

Would flash do this job better? Fill flash explains how to balance a small flash with daylight when there is not enough light to bounce, or when you are working alone.

How much fill to aim for

The aim of fill is to lift the shadows, not to erase them. A face with no shadow side has no shape. A useful target is to leave the shadow side one to two stops darker than the lit side. One stop darker is a 2:1 ratio and looks soft and open. Two stops darker is 4:1, which keeps clear shape and some mood. Three stops darker, 8:1, starts to look dramatic.

Compare that with the table above. A white panel at about 1 m in sun gives roughly 2.5 stops on its own, plus whatever the sky adds, which brings it to about 2 stops, around 4:1, the firmer end of that range. Bring it a little closer for a softer, more open look. That is why “about an arm’s length, just out of frame” is such common advice for white. Lighting ratios covers how to measure and choose a ratio, and how fill changes it.

Want to check you can set the balance between key and fill? Try the studio lighting ratios quiz.

The catchlight tells you what the reflector is doing

A reflector usually shows up as a small reflection in the eyes, called a catchlight. It is the quickest check you have. If there is no catchlight from the reflector, it is probably not reaching the face. A round reflector gives a round catchlight, a rectangle gives a rectangle. A reflector held low gives a catchlight in the lower part of the iris, which looks natural when it is faint and odd when it is brighter than the catchlight from the main light above. If the lower catchlight is the brighter of the two, the fill is too strong or too low.

The world is full of reflectors

You are using reflectors whether you carry one or not. Every surface near your subject bounces light, and its color comes with it.

• Snow, sand and pale concrete act like a white reflector the size of the ground. That is why faces at the beach or in snow have bright, open shadows under the chin, and why beach and snow scenes so often fool the light meter.
• A sunlit white wall beside your subject is a free, very large white reflector. Move the subject closer to it for more fill.
• Green grass, leaves and colored walls reflect their own color. A face above a lawn picks up a green cast in the shadows that no global white balance setting can fully remove. A white reflector or a black panel on that side replaces or blocks the colored bounce.
• Ceilings and walls indoors are what bounce flash uses: aiming a flash at a pale ceiling turns the ceiling into a large white reflector.

Want to go deeper into how light behaves when it hits shiny things? Specular highlights covers the bright reflections of a light source on skin, glass and metal, and how to control them.

Reflector or flash for fill

A reflector can only send back part of the light that reaches it, so it is never brighter than its source. Where there is strong light to bounce, it gives you a fill you can see and adjust in real time, with no batteries, no settings and no test shots. Under heavy overcast it gives only a faint lift, and indoors away from a window it gives almost nothing. Flash makes its own light, so it works anywhere and at any time, but you judge it from test shots. For a portrait outdoors in good light, a reflector is often the faster tool. When the light is weak or you need fill at a distance, flash wins. The lighting overview shows where both fit with the other tools.

Common mistakes with reflectors

• Aiming silver like white. A silver reflector held roughly toward the subject usually sends its beam somewhere else. Watch the face and tilt until the patch lands on it, or use white, which forgives loose aim.
• Silver into someone’s eyes in hard sun. It is close to as bright as the sun. People squint and tear up. Use white, feather the beam so only its edge touches the face, or move the subject into shade and fill from there.
• Walking a silver reflector back to make it softer. Distance does not soften silver; its edge stays hard. Switch to white, or put a diffuser over the light source instead.
• Too much fill. A shadow side as bright as the lit side looks flat. Aim for one to two stops darker, and check that the face still has shape.
• Gold in warm light. In golden hour sun, gold fill turns skin orange. Save gold for cool light.
• Expecting a reflector to create light. If nothing bright is hitting the reflector, nothing useful comes off it. Under thick cloud or in a dim room, bring the subject nearer the light, or use flash.
• Ignoring the bounce that is already there. A face over a green lawn or beside a red wall picks up that color in the shadows. Look before you add a reflector; sometimes the fix is a black panel or a better spot.

Try this: one face, three distances, two surfaces

You need ten minutes, a person or a large stuffed toy, a bright window or the sun to one side, and something white and something shiny: a sheet of white foam board or paper and a piece of kitchen foil smoothed onto cardboard will do.

1. Put your subject with the light to one side, so half the face is in shadow. Set your exposure for the lit side and keep it fixed (manual mode, or lock exposure), so only the fill changes between frames.
2. Take one frame with no reflector.
3. Hold the white board on the shadow side, facing the light and the face, at about 0.5 m, then 1 m, then 2 m. Take one frame at each distance.
4. Swap to the foil at about 1 m. Tilt it until you see a bright patch land on the face, and take a frame. Then step it back to 2 m, re-aim, and take another.

Judge the set side by side. In the white frames, the shadow side should get clearly darker at each step back, and the edge between light and shadow should soften as the board comes closer. Most people find the 1 m frame the most natural. In the foil frames, the patch should be about as bright at 2 m as at 1 m, with a hard edge both times. Look at the eyes in every frame: the frames where the fill reaches the face are the ones with a catchlight from it.

Reflector questions people ask

Which reflector surface should I start with?

White. It is the hardest to get wrong because it softens as you bring it closer and does not need exact aim. Move to silver when white is too weak, for example when your subject is backlit and the face needs a real light.

How big should a reflector be?

Big enough to fill the area you want to light from the distance you will use it. For a head and shoulders portrait, a panel about as wide as your arm is long, used within about a meter, works well. Larger panels light more of the body and give softer light from the same distance, but they catch the wind.

Can I make my own reflector?

Yes. White foam board, a white sheet of card or a white sheet over a frame all work as white reflectors. Foil smoothed onto cardboard works as silver; crumpled first and then flattened, it gives a slightly softer, more spread beam.

Does a reflector work on a cloudy day?

Yes, but weakly, because there is no strong source for it to bounce. It still helps most when held low, so it sends some of the light from the bright sky up into the eye sockets. If you need more than that, you need flash.

Why does my subject squint when I use a reflector?

Because a silver or gold reflector in sun sends back a beam nearly as bright as the sun itself. Switch to white, angle the beam so only its edge reaches the face, or ask the subject to close their eyes and open them on a count of three.

Do I still need a reflector if I own a flash?

Not strictly, but they suit different moments. A reflector lets you see the fill as you adjust it and needs no power, which makes it quick for portraits in good light. Flash works when there is too little light to bounce.

Ready to use one on a person? Portrait lighting patterns shows the shapes a key light makes on a face, and where fill from a reflector softens each one.

Curious what the reflector is filling in? Fill light explains the job a reflector usually does, and the other ways to do it.