Hi Gary, As Ken has posted, a brolly is slang for an umbrella. Photographically, a flash brolly is an umbrella structure covered with either reflective material, silver, white or gold in colour, or with transmissive material which is nearly always white. The flash gun is placed (on a bracket) about where the umbrella handle would be, facing into the brolly, which is normally supported on a (flimsy) tripod stand. The big advantage apart from portability, is that your subject is illuminated from a large source of light, and for portraits this can give much more flattering results than using plain flash. Used with reflective material, the gun faces away from the sitter with the inside of the brolly towards the sitter, and the colour bias of the slide is influenced by the colour of the covering. (white gives a neutral bias, silver somewhat cool and gold a warm tinge.) Used with transmissive material, you fire the gun towards the sitter but through the brolly material. This gives a neutral colour bias but with a large diffused light source.
When introduced they were hailed as removing the guess work from (guide number) flash photography. Not so, the light loss of about 2 stops only applies under certain conditions. The early ones all used transmissive white material but were recommended to be used as reflectors, with considerable transmission to the room surroundings, not recognised by the manufacturers. Small room = correct exposures; large room with high ceilings or outdoors = heavy underexposure. (Some wedding photographers use a similar idea with their fold-up Lastolite reflectors.) Flash frequency If you want to try strobe photography (many flashes on one frame) your new gun has the capability to not only vary the time between flashes but also the total number. For good effects, you will need a dark background, and you will have to see your gun's manual for the reduction in guide number, and shutter speed recommendations. For starters I'd suggest trying to capture someone skipping or juggling at say 5-10 Hz (flashes per second) and say a burst of 5-10 flashes with your camera's shutter open for about 1/2 to1 second. Take note of and observe any restrictions set by the gun manufacturer, otherwise you may damage the flash gun. M Stewart Milton Keynes, UK ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary Kaplan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2001 3:16 AM Subject: Re: EOS Wireless E-TTL and FEC > What's a brolly? * **** ******* *********************************************************** * For list instructions, including unsubscribe, see: * http://www.a1.nl/phomepag/markerink/eos_list.htm ***********************************************************
