Gear Wednesdays – Modifying flash
Hello fellow photographers and internet friends. Tonight I wanted to show you a few different ways of modifying your flash. For my model tonight, I used my Ibanez 7 string guitar. My wife just didn’t feel like being in front of the camera again.
As I showed in my 365 pic from yesterday, we’re going to modify the light using an umbrella. I have a 32″ photoflex umbrella. It cost about $40.00 at Henrys.
From Left to right:
Direct flash – It lightens up the image but doesn’t have even lighting across the guitar. Mostly a nice big hotspot on the bottom right.
Direct flash with Gary Fong – Still pointing the flash right at the guitar, so you still have a hot spot on the bottom right, with the light a little more diffused.
Flash bounced inside the umbrella - Now we’re starting to get somewhere. As we get a bigger lighting source, the light gets a little better. It’s still not covering everything, but the lighting is softer.
Flash in Shoot Through – Ahhh, here we go. Nice even light. Big light source. The lighting even reaches the top of the guitar.
That’s our short lesson for tonight. I’m really excited to keep working with off camera flash and diffusing the light. Stay tuned for more episodes.
