pop diffuser

[triggerhappy]

hi.

How effective are the pop up diffuser like this one?





Mark

[Colin Southern]

Hi Mark,

Have a read of this.

[Inkanyezi]

Or a shorter answer: not very efficient.
Basically you get the same flat lighting from a small light source, but less of it.

A diffuser of that size makes the light source slightly larger at the same time as it steals about half of the light or more. At distances of about a metre or more, the increased size of the light source is negligible, and the light still comes from the sime angle.

[rpcrowe]

I would expect that you could get just about the same results using a piece of facial tissue in front of the pop-up flash.

Unfortunately, IMO, the pop-up flash is generally pretty useless.

I recommend a hotshoe flash that can be rotated and tilted (to facilitate bouncing) used with a reflector/diffuser. To pick this up even another notch, use an off-camera flash cord and a flash bracket which will keep the flash over the axis of the lens. However, the improvement bouncing with a reflector diffuser over straight-on flash is far greater than the improvement gained by bouncing with a flash bracket over bouncing with a flash on the hotshoe.

In the past, we were pretty well restricted to the Canon and Sigma hotshoe units but, lately there has been an upswell in ETTL compatible hotshoe flashes from various manufacturers such as Yongnuo, Bower, Sunpak and others... If you are on a tight budget and don't need manual capability on your flash unit... a used 420EX might be a consideration.

I frequently use my flashes as fill-light outdoors and thus, I like a flash that has a high-speed-sync capability. The HSS allows me to shoot at above 1/250 second which is a common occurance when I am shooting outdoors.

I would not however, consider the Canon 270EX flash as my only general purpose flash unit. Although I do use the 270EX for specific purposes, the lack of a rotation capability and its low power negate the 270EX as a general purpose flash.

[rick55]

Hi, Mark;

I would ask the question this way: why would you ever use the pop-up flash? I think the pop-up flash 1) allows the entry-level and pro-sumer DSLRs to function somewhat like P&S cameras, which helps people coming from that world make the transition; and 2) is a convenience when people like me suddenly see that their shutter speed is 1/5s, and the camera bag is in the trunk. It allows me to get a shot that I'd otherwise miss.

But with either of those reasons for using the pop-up flash, why would you carry a diffuser? If you're carrying gear, carry a hot-shoe flash, for all the reasons noted above.

Cheers,
Rick