Design Nomenclature / Light & Optics
Bounce light
Also called bounce, reflector, bounce card
Light redirected off a reflector — card, wall, ceiling, scrim — rather than aimed at the subject directly. The reflector becomes the effective source, so its size and distance, not the lamp's, govern shadow softness. Its colour is the reflector's albedo multiplied into the beam.
In practice
A studio bounce is a physical card. In a renderer, bounce counts light-path segments — a bounce limit of two is not two reflectors.
Not to be confused with
- Indirect lightLight reaching a point only after one or more reflections off other surfaces. It carries their colour, arrives from broad directions rather than from one, and fills form shadows — which is why a scene lit by direct light alone has shadows that go dead black.
- Fill lightA secondary source that raises illuminance on the shadow side, controlling how much detail survives there. Fill sets the lighting ratio rather than the direction: it is placed so as to cast no visible shadow of its own, usually broad, low in contrast, and near the camera axis.