What's the big differences and cons and pros of the different umbrellas.

I've been reading different articles Google threw at me and I'm getting mixed results, some say shoot throughs are better and some say reflectives are better.

I get the feeling that reflective light is much harsher and brings out more detail. I tried it out on two different portrait shoots with a speedlite.

generally i prefer shooting through for the softer look
but do sometime use the reflective approch

Thanks for the answers, it's not so much of a big deal anymore, I was unaware that you could buy umbrellas that work both ways. Before I was trying to decide which to get.

if you are using speedlights you should get reflective because shoot through has more light loss. also reflective lets you change the light spread better because the light spreads differently when the umbrella is closer/further away to the speedlight. i dont think there is a big difference between the two when it comes to harsh/soft light, but shoot through should technically have slightly softer light, but i dont think you will notice any difference between them. also shoot through will reflect light around the room more, so if you want a low key picture, reflective should work better. i think there are umbrellas that have removable reflector in it, so that you can use it as shoot through or reflective

Yep, that's what I had just said I found and also what I plan to buy.

I use hybrids @ work. Then again, it's with Nikon, so regardless of how good I calibrate the camera, skin tones are orange and need fixing in PP.

Haha...

I don't think I've ever had orange skin tones... But I don't like shooting people, so I hardly do so.

Clearly you just need to be better.

Clearly, this doesn't happen with Canon, Pentax, or Sony, so Nikon needs to change their protective layers in their lenses.

Clearly, you need to shoot people to notice this (especially evident in yellowish-skinned Caucasians).

Clearly, I U

This post was edited by onepagememory on Dec 26 2010 05:06pm