Hello Rebekah, Flash photography is much more complex than simple modifiers at the light source. Among them are the shape of the light, power of the light and direction of the light. A clip on flash can't do much about any of those three - it can vary power a little bit. So diffusers directly on flash mostly cut down the power and spread the light source out a little bit. Bouncing, umbrellas and such provide much more control of the light source, but at a cost of portability and power. If you bounce, you can lose a lot of light, so now your flash needs to be much more powerful to compensate.
So unless you have a big, powerful flash to be able to bounce off objects (ceilings, walls, etc) or umbrellas, you will have problems with lack of light for your subject. In something like a wedding, it becomes a bigger problem because you need to be able to move around - and many times, there are no good objects to bounce off. Ceilings too high or outdoors or something like that. The complications go on and on - much like other aspects of photography, it is about compromising. Perhaps a full on discussion about flash photography would be good on the list. -- Best regards, Bruce Monday, August 27, 2007, 2:29:31 PM, you wrote: R> Mike, I've seen those before, but I was wondering something a little R> different. If you've ever looked closely at a light used in a stage R> performance of some kind, they tend to have something in front of the R> light, which is a light filter made of polyester. They look like big R> squares of colored plastic wrap. Here's a picture: R> http://www.istockphoto.com/file_closeup/?id=1405145&refnum=401313 R> Although there is an enormous variety of colors there are also a bunch R> of things know as "frosts" and "silks" and are a wide range of R> different sorts of diffusers. Is there anything in the photography R> world like this? Because I have sample books from various companies R> that sell this stuff, and I've been taping it to my flash and R> experimenting. Here's a page that shows the colors they offer but R> unfortunately you can't see what the diffusers look like: R> http://www.rosco.com/us/filters/roscolux.asp#colors R> They do have the spectral information which is interesting to R> consider. Here's a picture of a swatchbook, the diffusers are the R> white ones and tend to look like dryer sheets. R> http://www.rosco.com/us/promotions/roscolux.asp R> So, to summarize my meandering typing, are there interchangable R> filters for flashes that offer a wide variety in diffusers and/or R> colors? R> rg2 R> On 8/27/07, mike wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Rebekah wrote: >> >> > Not that I know a lot, but I vote shoot your flash off the ceiling, if >> > you can. Or cover it with thin fabric, like fine linen (maybe rip a >> > bit of bridal gown?) If you've ever seen a sample book from a gel >> > company for theatrical lighting you might have noticed that the >> > swatches are almost the perfect size to cover most flashes, and you >> > can experiment with the various frost filters. There's something to be >> > said for changing the quality of light before it hits your lens - it's >> > almost like setting up those fancy flash umbrellas with only a flash >> > that fits in your pocket. I don't know, do they have things like this >> > for flashes and I'm just being silly? >> >> http://www.stofen.com/Info/index.htm >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
