On camera flash pls cc.

El2 · Dec 22, 2008

I was playing around this weekend with trying to diffuse my on-camera flash. I used a card stock to bounce it off. How did I do? I think the toy is a bit bright. Please CC my picture. Any tips, ideas? How is my focus and any other technical stuff that I should be reading up on.

chrisburke · Dec 22, 2008

face is kind of bright too... IMO...

zbo2408 · Dec 22, 2008

I think your defuser worked well... You should of just used a slightly quicker exposure by maybe only a single stop...

Chewbecca · Dec 22, 2008

chrisburke said:
face is kind of bright too... IMO...

kind of, but really, not too bad, honestly.
And I agree with the last poster, just a stop down would probably fix it.:mrgreen:
There's ways of fixing it in PP.
You can clone the tiny spot on the nose that is a little blow. You can take down the brightness and lightness and/or mess around with it in curves.

El2 · Dec 22, 2008

Thanks for the CC. On Photoshop I used soft light - maybe I used too much, that's why the nose is a bit blown.

tirediron · Dec 22, 2008

Agree with the above; the image has been well executed; the flash and bounce worked well, but the face is just a little bright esp. camera left. Good work.

Derek Zoolander · Dec 22, 2008

what flash did you use for this?

El2 · Dec 23, 2008

Derek Zoolander said:
what flash did you use for this?

the built in flash on the camera.

LaFoto · Dec 23, 2008

Given that you developed ways to diffuse the only flash you have (I assume... the in-built one which usually gives awful shadows), I must say you really did well here! Really well! It doesn't show at all that it was the in-built one! And the brightness we see here in your photo on display may well be a result of running the "soft light" over the pic in PS. I think you have to be careful about the "dose".

But I like it for a children's photo, I like a bit of brightness and softness to reflect their soft faces.

Derek Zoolander · Dec 23, 2008

El2 said:
the built in flash on the camera.

Very cool! Did you just hold the card up to it or did you build some sort of contraption to keep it there?

If you have the time, I'd love to see a picture of how it was positioned. I tried holding an envelope in front of it last night and I got fairly good results, but they weren't consistent.

I wonder if they make diffusers for the built-in flash?

Chewbecca · Dec 23, 2008

Derek Zoolander said:
I wonder if they make diffusers for the built-in flash?

As a matter of fact, they do.

chris miss · Dec 23, 2008

I've seen a lot of homemade diffusers online, but this one looks pretty interesting. I'm going to try it with a milk carton and see what happens. This guy has some amazing shots! I have the Canon EF Macro 100mm f/2.8 coming tomorrow, but couldn't spring for the close-up filters yet. (I hope it's OK to post a link to another photo forum???)

scroll about half-way down the page:
link to diffuser instructions