Flash diffuser?

[WesternGuy]

I need to get a flash diffuser for my Canon 580EX. I have absolutely no experience with these and would like to hear from others' experience. Type? Brand? etc.

Any insight that any one can provide will greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

[jetrim]

From everything I've read the commercially available diffusers don't work very well at all. Though it ain't as pretty as the commercial ones, I've used a wadded up section of a white plastic bag with very good success for my onboard flash; my brother prefers the cellophane from a cigarette pack on his Olympus dslr, and I think it was Frog who recently posted a link to an article about a homemade diffuser for hotshoe flashes that looked like it would work very well. Check out the strobist.com website as well, tons of good info there on lighting solutions.

[Frog]

I use the Gary Fong diffuser.....works great. There are a lot of articles on making your own..just google it.

[Franglais]

I use the flash diffuser that came with my Nikon SB800 flash sometimes. It is most effective when you are in a room with a fairly low, white ceiling and you point the flash up at 45 degrees. The light is frontal with a catchlight in the eyes but there is a progressive spread of light onto the background. It's an interesting compromise between direct (black background) and bounce (no catchlight).

A lot of people use it head-on with no bounce, no ceiling but I find there is not a lot of difference compared with using the flash without the diffuser.

Why do you say you "have to get one"?

[readingr]

I use the flip down diffuser that came with the 430EX and a card and an elastic band when I want more diffusion.

Roger R.

[mjs1973]

I use the Stofen Omni Bounce on my 580EX. It seems to work pretty good. I like that it's small enough that I can just leave it on the flash.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...for_Canon.html

[SmartWombat]

I use a velcro fitted Lastolite Apollo softbox, great for kitten pictures, and the 10" softens the light enough for emergency headshots of people.

I was shooting with the 10" on camera with the 580EXII and the 8" off-camera using the Canon built-in IR slave with the 580EX.


Omnibounce is good in situations where there's something to bounce the light from.
I've seen people using it outside and wondered what they thought they were doing - no walls, no ceiling, no point ?
Even more so when a photographer working for marketing was outside, in sunshine, with the omnibounce pointing straight up, and trying to use the flash. Looking very puzzled when it didn't fill the shadows.

[another view]

Paul's Lastolite seems to do a really nice job, due to the size of it - and most importantly the size of it relative to the subject and the fact that it's very close. The really soft light in a studio shot is usually created with big softboxes (like what Paul has, just bigger like maybe 2' x 3'. These softboxes are usually just outside the view of the camera and wrap light around a subject to some degree.

When you take something very small and move it 8 or 10 feet away, it's the size of a pinhead in relation to the subject. Even a big softbox at that kind of distance looses it's "softness". Just the physics of light at work. So - there really isn't much chance for the small diffusers to do much, regardless of the claims of their makers. They take out a little harshness sometimes, but the differences between the seemingly hundreds that are out there is pretty slight.

[WesternGuy]

Charles, "I have to get one" -- I suppose I don't have to get one, but, in August I took a bunch of pictures at my son's wedding (no I was not the Official photographer) and a lot of the indoor images have strong shadows in them. Maybe there is an alternate that I don't know about - I really don't know a lot about flash because most of my photography is outdoors. I want one so I can use it at Christmas to take indoor pictures and not have them full of heavy shadows.

As far as making one - if you knew me, you would know that I am not exactly what you would call a handyman.

Folks, thanks for all your input and suggestions and the illustrations.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

[SmartWombat]

As a walk-around solution it's not too bad.
Gets rid of the on-camera flash sharp edges.

[JamesV]

My gf purchased a Gary Fong for me last year for my 430ex.
It works great but also others have had great examples of home made ones.

SW, that is a great shot with your diffuser...

James

[Franglais]

Charles, "I have to get one" -- I suppose I don't have to get one, but, in August I took a bunch of pictures at my son's wedding (no I was not the Official photographer) and a lot of the indoor images have strong shadows in them. Maybe there is an alternate that I don't know about - I really don't know a lot about flash because most of my photography is outdoors. I want one so I can use it at Christmas to take indoor pictures and not have them full of heavy shadows.

What do you mean by "strong shadows"? Give us an example.

On-camera flash is pretty much in the same line as the lens. The flash is pretty much a point source illuminating the subject frontally, like shining a flashlight in their faces. You might get a sharp shadow under the nose, but mostly the flash will have flattened the light. It will probably totally overpower the room light as well. You have the impression that people are in a cave.

If you use a cobra (external flash) head-on the result is similar but attentuated by two things:

1. The light source is slightly bigger therefore a bit softer
2. The light source is higher up and further from the lens therefor you might start to get some modelling effect on the faces. But the light is still hard. That might give you the "stong shadows"

If you put a diffuser on your cobra and point it up at 45 degrees you are still basically head-on but the effect is further attenuated:

3. The light source is a little larger and softer
4. The light source is higher up still
5. You might get some light reflected off the ceiling which would help to fill in the dark background and fill in shadows

SmartWombat's picture of the couple is starting to get quite good modelling on the couple. See how the light source has moved up and the shadows under nose and chin are softened? But the background is still dark. Is that what you mean by strong shadows?

When I'm doing pictures of the family and I want it to look natural:

1. I set the camera to 800ISO so that the room lighting is subdued but present, not totally overpowered by the flash
2. I use bounce flash or bounce with the diffuser. I must try out the little tag thing on the SB800 - it gives you a catchlight in the eyes even with bounce flash

Best results I ever got were with the Metz CT45 torch with two flash heads, one shraight on and one for bounce. But it's not compatible with digital cameras. And it's huge..

[Alison]

My Stofen Omni lives on my flash. However I tend to use the Gary Fong for weddings.
But overall I still prefer to bounce

[WesternGuy]

Charles on your question of strong shadows. A lot of the indoor photos show shadows of the people in the photo on walls behind them, for example, when the bride and groom were posing after the wedding, they did so in a hallway and my flash pictures show their shadow on the wall behind them. They also posed for some pictures on a beautiful, wooden stairwell and my photos show their shadows on the rising part of the stairwell behind them. I realize that I can probably take them out with Photoshop, but that would be a lot of work. With a diffuser, I am hoping that I will not get wall shadows in the future.

Alison, thanks for your insight. I will do some surfing and see what they are like.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

[SmartWombat]

No diffuser you can carry will remove the shadows.
But if you're close to walls or have low ceilings then bouncing the flash will give a really soft light - imagine a 6 foot square softbox ! That's what you get with a bounce flash diffuser used correctly.
Try using it outdoors and you don't get good results

[Franglais]

No diffuser you can carry will remove the shadows.
But if you're close to walls or have low ceilings then bouncing the flash will give a really soft light - imagine a 6 foot square softbox ! That's what you get with a bounce flash diffuser used correctly.
Try using it outdoors and you don't get good results

If you increase the ISO setting to 800 or so then you might be able to reduce the depth of the shadows by using roomlight.

BTW SW I like your examples. I just adore cats, for a start. And the couple - where are they from? There is something very - central-south-eastern England about them. Perhaps it's the tie or the girl's look.

[brmill26]

Diffusers can make a pretty big difference even with the built-in flash on a camera. A friend of mine wanted me to do some portrait shots of her and I didn't have any lighting equipment at all. So the only thing I could do was make a diffuser for my XTi's flash. I made it from a cardboard soapbox, paperclips, tape, and part of a white Walmart plastic bag. It's probably about 8" wide and 5" tall.

These are test images without and with the diffuser. The camera is about 6' away, 4' high, with the scene maybe 1' from the door behind. The settings are fully manual and exactly the same from shot to shot to get the most even comparison (hence the diffused image is slightly darker). But you can see the massive difference in shadows, particularly of the rider and through the hole.

No diffuser


With diffuser - note that the rider's shadow is basically gone.


And in action, it produced a fine result.

[SmartWombat]

The Lastolite is lined with reflective silvery metallic coating, so that help get more light out of the front.
Another improvement I found was to flip down the plastic wide angle diffuser.

Shooting the diffuser from the front I could see a hot spot in front of the flash head, and worked out the zoom of the flash coupled with lens zoom info was illuminating the centre of the diffuser. This means that using manual zoom and selecting widest angle, then flipping down the prism diffuser will make the illumination of the front of the box more even.

[JETA]

I got a great recommendation from this board and bought the softbox from Lumiquest.

http://www.lumiquest.com/products/softbox.htm

I use it all of the time. I've shelfed my Gary Wong diffuser.

[SmartWombat]

Looks very similar to the Lastolite, but with a cut-out at the bottom for flashes that have built-in sensors.
Also it's got that rounded patch on the front, I guess it's a thicker area, maybe even a reflector inside, to avoid the "hot spot" that I get if the flash is zoomed in.