The 9 Best Light Reflectors
Special Honors
The Light Bridge CLR This innovative product asks gaffers to reimagine their traditional lighting setups by placing their sources on the ground and pointing them up at the panels that come in any of their exciting kits. The reflective power of each is honed to replicate the effects of specific diffusion intensities and light colors, allowing you to use just two implements for your key where you otherwise might need several. thelightbridge.com
Matthew Expendable Matthboards This offering comes from one of the most widely used companies in the film and photography industries. Its soft side features a honeycomb pattern that helps break up the light bouncing off of it to add an extra degree of scatter, while the hard side creates sourcier results. It measures 40 x 40 inches and comes in either silver or gold. msegrip.com
Editor's Notes
June 16, 2020:
After a close examination of the selections on our previous list, I decided to get rid of a few that I felt really didn't fit in. While something like the Emart Umbrella Kit or the Emart Studio Kit would come with umbrellas that reflected their included lights, they were more total kits than anything else, and we already have a photographic lighting list, so it was important to me to be sure this ranking was populated with a wide variety of reflectors only. To that end, we also removed the Life of Photo Lightdow White Balance, which is really intended for calibrating a camera's exposure more than anything else. Can it reflect light? Sure, but so can a shaving mirror — that doesn't mean it belongs here.
In their places we introduced things like the Westcott Eyelighter 2, a smartly designed piece of curved material that is intended to sit beneath a model in a beauty lighting setup and cast really flattering fill up at them. You don't have to limit yourself to that, though. There are probably a handful of other instances when that kind of curve could come in handy, especially if you're working with video and you want to try something a little daring.
We also added a reliable 6-in-1 collapsible in the Westcott 1032 Kit, which adds an unusual hue to the standard white, black, gold, silver combination. The company calls it sunlight, and I can say it warms up a fill light in the direction of gold without becoming too yellow for use in most brightly lit outdoor environments.