The Westcott Eyelighter reflective panel is fantastic for headshots. It can make it so you need fewer lights and fewer reflectors for your photographs. In this Westcott Eyelighter 2 review, you will hear and see my thoughts on this product. You will also see a real-world example before and after use of the Eyelighter Reflective Panel.
For a very long time I’ve been using lights and reflectors, but it wasn’t until recently that I was given the opportunity to try something new in the light modifying world. Meet the eyeliner lighter too well the bag that it comes in. So in this setup and for any time I do headshots, I have lights either here or here and here or here and here, different places, but I also use reflectors and the reflectors I use are typically silver. I like silver more than than like the gold color reflections and sometimes I use white reflectors depending on just, well if I need to diffuse the reflect the reflected light, if I need to be softer than than silver’s, pretty harsh sometimes to reflect her. I have right here off screen is actually a circular filter. You can see it right here and the reflector is just sitting on a light stand and I have a reflector holder.
It’s kind of like a boom arm that holds this circular reflector in place. And then on the top of the boom arm I can actually put a second light. The Westcott I letter is actually a very different type of reflector. It is a u shape reflector that actually sits down below now, right now in this video set I have a table right down here where I can put any products that I need to talk about. Just grab it real quick and then put it back when I’m done. I’m going to have to adjust when I set up this islander, but I wanted to show you, well first how it looks normally where I have one light right here. You can see it on my hand right here and I have a reflector right here off screen. You can see it’s reflecting a little bit onto my hand, but look at the different brightnesses.
That’s why my face is illuminated on this side, but not as well as this side. That’s on purpose for more of a dynamic look. So I want to open up the eyeliner and we’ll show you what’s what’s inside first. I I’m impressed. It does come to a nice bag. I don’t know. I feel like typically if you have something like this, you’re not going to set it up and break it down so it doesn’t really need such a fancy case. They probably could have saved money and in turn charge less to customers by not sending it in such a fancy case. I mean it’s even padded a little bit. So this is the reflection material. Is it actually going to be bigger than I thought it was? Wow. This is big. Like a big, this is, oh you want to see the other side so you can see, you can see that a bright, not as bright.
This side, this side is being illuminated by that reflector over there. This side is being eliminated by the light. I’m gonna have to do some major adjusting because I didn’t realize it was this big. By the way. The point of the [inaudible] letter is to actually highlight is to eliminate the entire face under from underneath to counteract the light from above and without the need for light underneath. You’re just putting a reflector because it’s sort of this u shape shape. It’s wrapping around your face beautifully. These are the extension tubes which are going to be used to keep the eye lighter in the curve too. By the way, there are also some cheap knockoffs on Amazon. I found that reflectors you get what you pay for, not just in the materials used for the metal components and plastic component, but also the reflection material itself. A lot of the cheap knock off reflectors from the, from these knockoff brands.
I’m still sleeping. It push the, the, there’s a hole here and a screw and then I can securely tightened it with lean, a little lug nuts and stuff. And uh, I can’t get it through here so I can tighten it down all the way. I can pop it off.
No, I knew it would go. So it’s almost in all the way that’s better than nothing. I’m gonna get the other side on. It looks pretty cool here. It doesn’t it, I might have to use a different light stand because this one is as low as it goes. So how does this look? Now I’m hearing more of reflection for my voice. It’s a little bit more troubling now because now I’ve got this sort of silver material that’s literally right where I’m speaking. Uh, and in fact my microphone is right above it. So this should actually change your sound of the audio as well. So it may not be the best for me to use this for my videos. Plus it’s so big that it’s actually more uncomfortable than I thought it was going to be. Uh, let’s lift it up a little bit more and see if I can sort of angle it and make it better for, for this purpose.
All right, so now actually, wow, my voice. This sounds so weird. Um, so now I’ve got it. Actually it’s up pretty high and it’s right, like right where this video stopped, right where the camera stops, where you can’t see anymore. That is where the reflector is. It’s right below. Let me zoom out so you can see. So you can see the curves right here. You can see the curves. It is literally right here. But how does it look? My shirt is more illuminated because I got, by the way, there’s only one light. Let’s go in a little bit more. So this is only one light. Now the thing that really is going to bother me is that because I’m hearing it is how my voice is sounding right now compared to how it sounds without this reflector. This is making the reverb or echo probably more reverb of this area enhanced where normally it’s sort of a dead sound.
Normally it’s you talk and it just stops, but I’m hearing it for like a half, a millisecond after. So it’s probably gonna sound different in the audio. It definitely don’t look different. Again, my shirt is more illuminated and it gives the only one light. So in theory I would get one more light here. And now what have like perfect illumination. This is why it’s so good for headshots because it’s literally enhancing the light and it’s only one light, literally one light. That’s illuminating me right now. And you can see that underneath is bright or the top is bright. The only thing that is not perfectly bright is this side of my face. But again, if you get one more light angled sort of the same way, it’s going to be perfect even light, which is great for headshots. So first things first, what do I think of the islanders to so far it is impressive how uh, easy it was to assemble very simple instructions, very easy to assemble. The materials are just Westcott is fantastic. They make fantastic products. So the material, the craftmanship and this is great and I thought it was weird that I couldn’t get it on the first light stand, but I was able to get it on to other light stands. So there’s that. Uh, I don’t like how echoey things are getting, but again, this isn’t necessarily made for video. This is really made for doing photos, headshots, beauty shots, stuff like that. Really for anything focusing around the face. And um, so far so good.
Tell him about, to do a full test of this. I’ve got right here, a softbox set up as the, as the main light. I have another strobe back here pointing towards the camera as the backlight. And I’m only gonna use this one main light to light the subject cause that I’m going to be using the I letter to, to distribute that light reflected, bounce it across the face and we’ll see the difference between with it and without it.
I know that might’ve been a long video for some but I just want to get some final thoughts on this. Now. The beginning part of this video was filmed with a Nikon d eight 50 the final part of the video with film with a Nikon d six. I’ve been working on this review trying to get this review done for you for about two to three months and I’m finally, I’m glad it’s finally done. My final thoughts on this are basically if you have a bunch of reflectors, you don’t need the eyeliner too. You don’t, you don’t even need one of the knockoffs if that’s what you’re thinking. If you got reflectors you could do what this does with multiple reflectors. If you don’t have multiple reflectors and you want to save money and not buy additional lighting and you want to use for four reflectors, then you can invest in the eyeliner too and get really beautiful.
I mean look how good this looks right now the light looks, this is now after two or three months. I don’t know how long. I’ve had this in my studio of using this and figuring out the best placement for the lighting compared to where the eyelid or two is. I’m still recording with just one light, one light. I do have a light back here. I do have one as like a sort of a a a hair light type thing but I’m recording with one light and just the I too and it looks really good so I am extremely impressed by it and it does. It is nice to not have to have a whole bunch of reflector out all the time and I would not use this for multiple people. I would only use it for headshots. It is quite powerful for a reflector because of that curve, you can enhance the light so much.
So again, my final thought is if you’ve got a bunch of reflectors already, you don’t need this, but if you do not have a bunch of reflectors and you want to go the reflector route instead of additional lighting, then check out the eye later too, because you can in turn save money because you’re buying one reflector that could do a lot instead of multiple reflectors. So think about that. Uh, thank you for watching. Click that subscribe button below now because I publish new videos every Monday and Thursday. You don’t want to miss it. And karate kick the notification bell.