Umbrellas: Extreme silver? soft silver? white ?

These are the three type of umbrellas am generally seeing all over the internet, whats the difference between them? do you all deliver diffused light on large area?
Do they really differentiate?

The more extreme the silver, the more specularity you'll have in your light (and more efficiency too). I ended up with mostly soft-silver with a couple white convertible ones that I don't use much currently. However, people go through moods with lighting. David Hobby (Mr. Strobist) used to prefer the silver (soft-silver equivalent) while now he recommends the convertible white with removable black backing. In a few years, there may be a new go-to in his kit. I'd recommended getting something middle-of-the-road to start and see how you like it. Then you can decide if you'd like a little softer or a little more efficient or ... Well, you get the idea.

More silver = more contrast, as I understand it. You specular highlights are 'hotter' with a silver vs a white.

Look here to compare results for yourself

http://www.bron.ch …torials/light-comparison/

lazer-jock wrote in post #15713807
The more extreme the silver, the more specularity you'll have in your light (and more efficiency too). I ended up with mostly soft-silver with a couple white convertible ones that I don't use much currently. However, people go through moods with lighting. David Hobby (Mr. Strobist) used to prefer the silver (soft-silver equivalent) while now he recommends the convertible white with removable black backing. In a few years, there may be a new go-to in his kit. I'd recommended getting something middle-of-the-road to start and see how you like it. Then you can decide if you'd like a little softer or a little more efficient or ... Well, you get the idea.

hmm.. yes i understand, I think the balanced one is soft silver, then we can see if we need white or extreme silver.
Thank you!

Shoot-through can give you less fall off than a reflective umbrella (because you can put the power source closer to your subject). That's david hobby's reasoning behind his switch

By being able to get it closer to the subject, the shoot through umbrella becomes a larger light source, relative to the subject. It, therefore, gives softer light. You can literally get it just outside of the camera frame. If I could only have one modifier, it would be a large (60 inch or +) convertible white umbrella. It just gives you a lot of options.

CxThree wrote in post #15717430
By being able to get it closer to the subject, the shoot through umbrella becomes a larger light source, relative to the subject. It, therefore, gives softer light. You can literally get it just outside of the camera frame. If I could only have one modifier, it would be a large (60 inch or +) convertible white umbrella. It just gives you a lot of options.

This is the reason I use shoot-thru white umbrellas. Especially when I'm doing clam-shell setups, they work really good. Only problem about shoot thru umbrellas is that there will always be some degree of light being bounced back so light-spill is the worst with shoot-thru as light is spread all over the front, and bouncing back also.

^true. That's why I started buying brolly umbrellas

Yeah, the softlighter II or the keiser knockoffs are good too.