Cool Diffuser For DSLR Owners With Built-In Flash

[jpeyton]

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Cheap option for those of you who don't have enough money for a hot-shoe flash, but hate direct-flash shadows.

Also a good option if your hot-shoe flash is too big to carry around everywhere and you need a simple bounce-flash option.

 

[randomlinh]

That's a lotta money. I like the business card diffuser myself when in a pinch. Works surprisingly well given it costs nothing for the most part. Just harder to rig up on some cameras since not everything has a hinge to use.

 

[warmodder]

You can do that with any sort of bounce card. Flashes are surprisingly hot though so it's pretty easy to burn the paper if you're not careful!

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: randomlinh
That's a lotta money. I like the business card diffuser myself when in a pinch. Works surprisingly well given it costs nothing for the most part. Just harder to rig up on some cameras since not everything has a hinge to use.

I use it all the time, love it!

 

[corkyg]

Here's another little trick which works pretty well on a P&S camera flash when using it at close range. Put a piece of Scotch Magic tape (green box) over the flash. It diffuses the flash and cuts glare.

This is a quickie pair I just did to illustrate:

Bare Flash

Taped Flash

It is effective and very cheap.

 

[virtuamike]

Can do the same with a business card, credit card, or anything that'd function as a bounce card in your wallet.

 

[oldsystem]

Ugh, I hate the shadow! Sometimes i still get it diffusing...

 

[soydios]

a simple diffuser won't do much; it'll simply make the edges of shadow slightly less harsh. bounce flash takes extra power, but creates a much more natural shadow, almost as if flash wasn't even used. diffused bounce flash takes a huge amount of power (SB-600/430EX minimum) for even short-range shots, but is definitely useful on occasion.

 

[Fardringle]

I'm not sure if it is because of the flash in my camera or simply because I'm doing it wrong, but I haven't been able to get decent results using any type of bounce card with my Fuji S6000fd even with the flash set to maxium power. It's certainly not on the level of an SB-600, but at full power the flash is bright enough to be useful up to 30 feet from the subject. However, everything turns out very dark (almost as if there was no flash used at all) in a room with 9 foot high white ceilings and white walls whether I use a white index card or a mirror to bounce the flash. If I use a business card the center of the shot is dark and the edges are bright where the flash projects around the sides of the card.

A piece of Scotch tape (green box variety as Corkyg mentioned) doesn't have any effect at all that I can see with my camera.

My best results with this camera have been with a 3x5 piece of standard white printer paper so most of the flash light goes through the paper and only a little is bounced up to the ceiling.

I have also had surprisingly good results using a small plastic cup as a diffuser "hood" over the entire flash. After trying dozens of different materials and items, the best results I got were from a nearly clear plastic Tupperware snack cup that is about 3 inches across and 2 inches deep. The 2"x1 1/4" frosting cup from a package of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls worked great as well. The Tupperware cup works slightly better at diffusing the glare and shadows, possibly because it has a larger surface area to diffuse the flash, or it could also be because the cup has a crystallized texture to it. One advantage (in my opinion) to both of these options is that I get slightly warmer colors in pictures of my girls' faces than I do with just the flash. Close up shots using the bare flash gives them a very pale, almost sickly skin tone. With the cup over the flash the pictures look much closer to their natural skin tone.

The frosting cup fits very nicely over my flash and even though it isn't tight enough to turn the camera sideways, it stays in place fairly well without any assistance (i.e. no tape) in horizontal shots. I'll probably end up using it unless I can figure out a way to make the Tupperware cup stay put since the bigger cup is very unstable just sitting over the flash.

 

[Krioni]

Last night I tried the film cannister diffuser posted here with my built in flash... I was fairly impressed with the improvement it made.

 

[Fardringle]

I did the same with a film canister, yogurt cup (on the same site you posted), and an empty Elmer's glue bottle with a hole cut in the side to fit my flash. They all worked fairly well but I couldn't get any of them to stay on the flash without a lot of tape.

These are the two cups I mentioned in my last post. The Tupperware cup is the larger one on the left. I just put them upside-down over my flash and it has a very similar effect to a Gary Fong Lightsphere. Maybe some day I'll get adventurous and cut a hole in the bottom of the cup for my flash so the cup can sit open side up and work almost exactly like a $50 Lightsphere.

 

[PHiuR]

3x5 note card + rubberband on a flash works well. (430ex/580ex/sb-800 or similar flashes). Also Sunpak and Vivatar Flashes work just as well for a quarter of the price of Canon and Nikon flashes.

If you didn't know, on Canon and perhaps Nikon DSLRS, you can turn the power down on the built in flashes, simply doing that often does the trick of filling in shadows. Another cool trick is to just stick your finger in front of the flash, that removes a couple stops of light and also diffuses pretty well!

 

[AndrewR]

Has anyone tried Gary Fong's Lightsphere? I was thinking of getting one, but I haven't bothered to do it yet, primarily because I've been too lazy to figure out which one I need (didn't have model matched for my Sony flash).

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: AndrewR
Has anyone tried Gary Fong's Lightsphere? I was thinking of getting one, but I haven't bothered to do it yet, primarily because I've been too lazy to figure out which one I need (didn't have model matched for my Sony flash).

P3/C3 if I remember my size right and assuming you have the 56 flash. The lightsphere works well for what it is. It's not going to replace a full studio setup, and if you have time to really adjust your shots then you can often do better by really controlling where you're bouncing. That said, as a "set it and forget it" tool, it is very helpful for situations where you don't have the time to be carefully setting up your lighting for each shot.

It definitely does attract notice though.

ZV