Soft Light Whether in portraits or tabletop photography, hard shadows are often distracting. However, with a little effort you can produce much softer light and shadows. This does not necessarily mean investing in an expensive studio strobe lighting system. Simply by the correct placement of flash units and softening devices, you can achieve a significantly more natural looking light. The images on the left page were all taken with only one external flash unit. However, you will need to have a synch cord or a hot-shoe adapter to be able to use your flash off-camera. Alternatively, you can control an external flash in connection with a slave unit by means of an internal camera flash or infrared You do not need expensive strobe lighting. You can achieve great results by Generally, some light intensity will be lost when using diffusers, softboxes, or reflectors. You can make up for this disadvantage by increasing the light sensitivity on your camera (e.g., by changing the ISO from 100 to 200). In our example, the back- ground consists of an imaging table with a seamless backdrop of a slightly reflective Plexiglas surface. In the following chapters we will look at how to build this setup, along with other equipment.