Gary Fong Diffuser - worth it?

[musicaleCA]

Can you tell me more about Vertex? Pros and cons?

Sure. Pros are that you can bounce light in three directions at once. One can easily bounce half of the light off a wall with a mirror, flick a little forward with the white diffuser panel, and the rest up to the ceiling for some fill. Because you're bouncing half of the light toward a wall, as long as the wall is close, you'll end-up with a good ratio. And that's just one of a myriad of potential set-ups and applications. You can bounce all the light to one wall, or to both sides, or behind you, yadda yadda.

As for cons, the real con here is the learning curve. The Vertex is NOT a patently easy device to use like the Gary Fong, Sto-fen, or Lumiquest diffusers. It takes effort, and you need to get used to it. Once you do, you have considerably more control though.

There are times it's not good to use the Vertex. One is in a large, open room, where the walls are far away and to bounce you need to zoom the flash as far as possible. In this case, it's best to just use the Vertex as a flag for the flash, to block direct light from the flash from hitting the subject. Just leaving one panel between the subject and flash, perpendicular to the flash bulb, is quite sufficient.

You could say another con is that you know...have to actually think about lighting when using the Vertex, over the GF where you just slap it on and go. But for all of the couple of seconds it takes me to adjust the Vertex to my needs for a shot, I'd much rather have the Vertex.