Do y'all think this is good good lighting...

rexbobcat · Mar 22, 2013

...For a homemade speedlight diffuser? I bought some tape and paper from the store for like $3 and built a ghetto diffuser for my flash seeing as how I'm not a big fan of ceiling bouncing (raccoon eyes) and I'm generally too far from a wall.

jaomul · Mar 22, 2013

It looks even but slightly over exposed but a tweak on flash power id say its good. It May need a faster shutter to darken background but i don't think your purpose here was image c and c

LouR · Mar 22, 2013

Must have been a very hot light. Look what it did to those poor girls' jeans...

Photographiend · Mar 22, 2013

Haha... I did that same thing recently when I was forced to use my on camera flash (being that my choices are either that or ambient light). :mrgreen:

The shots weren't perfect but still better than low light or direct flash.

Tiller · Mar 22, 2013

LouR said:
Must have been a very hot light. Look what it did to those poor girls' jeans...

It also gave her quite the tan...

Derrel · Mar 22, 2013

I dunno if I would classify it as "good good lighting"...but for diffused flash on-camera, I'd say it's "good" lighting. I think to qualify as good good lighting, I would want to see it be a bit more-diffused, and with a softer shadow. A wedding tog I used to know used to shoot his flash shots with a custom-modded Normal Enterprises 8-inch parabolic reflector and a white, nylon fabric "shower cap" kinda' diffuser, and with a massive bare-tube flash fitted into the Norman "bowl", his flash shots had a very diffused lighting quality to them...it was amazing...the bare-tube flash maybe giving that small reflector an advantage over say, a speedlight flash, which has a Fresnel lens in the front.

The shadows that your set-up creates seem placed appropriately and pleasingly to me...under the chin shadows that give shape and define the faces, without the light being ultra-hard. It looks like diffused, on-camera flash.

Rick50 · Mar 22, 2013

Sure brings all that color to life. Yum!

rexbobcat · Mar 22, 2013

Duplicate post

rexbobcat · Mar 22, 2013

Well yeah I wasn't meaning that it's just totally excellent lighting. I was just wondering if possibly my $3 solution could compete with the popular $50 Gary Fong Tupperware.

My solution is one of those dinner table mats (I needed a rigid backing) with some heavy paper stapled to the front and taped to the speedlite. It's freaking huge and cumbersome but it does cover a lot of area and it's fairly efficient. I don't typically enjoy trying to decipher how to get that "club lighting" look. I'd much rather use only natural light or strobes everywhere but sometimes those two options just aren't...well...options...

And these two girls are apparently cheerleaders at my university, so their look isn't surprising. I thought their heads were going to melt all Indiana Jones-like if I didn't take their picture.