Lumiquest pocket bouncer.

[payn817]

Thought I would try this as opposed to a $400+ ringlight. The ringlight would probably be better for the really close stuff. The butterflies are with flash/bouncer. The others are available light. Would like to know your thoughts on the bouncer effect. Thanks.

[Copy_Kot]

I don't know very much about lighting... but I know I like the middle shot! That's awesome!

The pale/bright spots on the butterflies eye's are a bit distracting, but I like them.

[Knight]

Like Copy i dont know much on lighting , but i know this , these are superb Payn817 Now tell us how you did it Ok i looked up Lumiquest pocket bouncer lol

[payn817]

Thanks for the comments!


For those wondering, here's a link to lumiquest:
http://www.lumiquest.com/lq871.htm

What i did was as opposed to pointing the flash at 90 degrees, pointed it at 75 degrees to push the light forward and more down. The bouncer works pretty good for portraits as well, especially when you have no ceiling, or are packing light. The negative side is that you loose 1-1.5 stops of light.

[mjs1973]

Hey Payn,

I think the lighting still looks a bit harsh. Not as harsh as direct flash, but still noticable. Do you have an off shoe cord or a way of fireing your flash from somewhere other than the hot shoe? I think that would help.

The catch lights in the eyes are a little odd too. I find myself staring at them. Normally I would say that's a good thing, but not in this case. To me they just look strange. Were these caused by the flash/bouncer?

[payn817]

Yeah, the reflections are from the device. I too thought they may be too much. It works better for flora, and less magnification (1:4 - 1:2), as it moves the flash far away enough to avoid such large spots in the eyes.

Yes, I have wireless devices, etc. I originally planned to have another person holding a monopod with the flash/bouncer mounted on it at different angles, and also without the bouncer. However, the location was busy and it would have been difficult to work with it much. Another thing I have done is to have an "assistant" hold a white umbrella with a flash mounted behind to shoot through, also can be mounted on tripod. We have used both the umbrella and bouncer mounted on stands or monopods to do headshots outside, with nice results. Based on those results, I wanted to try it for macro purposes.

In the end, I believe it may be worth $400 for the ringlight if macro is something I will be shooting on a regular basis.

Thanks for your input and making me think.

[Loupey]

Perfect time to try new gear/techniques!

The flower shot looks great but I agree that the butterflies look a little unnatural. But before you go out and spend $400, consider that ringlights throw a very peculiar ring reflection in the eyes. Plus, the "even" light itself of the ringlight looks unnatural IMO. Good for dental work, though

Keep in mind that the "harshness" we often see in flash images comes from the relationship between the subject-to-flash distance and the background-to-flash distance. This causes the dark backgrounds. Example: if the flash-to-subject distance is 1 meter but the background is another meter way (2 meters from the flash), the background will be 4 times darker (2 stops) than the subject.

The best remedy (no matter what flash is used), is to shoot from farther away (i.e. looong telephoto) so that there is not much of a distance difference, percentage wise, between the subject and its background. The other remedy is to use a properly balanced fill flash technique.

The second one is REALLY easy to do. But one must first master full manual exposure control to make it work without any effort