I know that a lot of people on this forum make their own diffusers and like to experiment. I recently ordered a Bogen Diffusion Kit from B&H and I'm experimenting with it now -highly recommended! Granted milk jug plastic and paper towels are cheap, but they do more to block the light and change the color temperature of it than actually diffusing the light.
Also they have a Tungsten / Daylight Conversion Kit that you can use to warm up the light that your flash is producing. I've been using a 1/4 CTO for my closeup photography these last few weeks and everyone has said that they like the light in the images. A CTO in the 1/8 to 1/4 range will give you light that looks like early morning or late evening sun...
Both kits sell for about $23 USD and there are several sheets of different grades of diffusion or color conversion and each sheet is 12"x12".
Thanks for the info, John. I have looked at that Bogen Diffusion Kit for a while, but it has sat in my Wish List as I have been trying out different free material. I may just spend the money and check it out.
1) Cut a piece that's big enough to bow out in front of the flash heads and either hot glue it down or use rubber bands to keep it in place.
2) Cut the front plastic out of a pair of Sto-Fens and hot glue some of the new diffuser material over the front. That's what I did in addition to hot gluing a piece of light frost and a 1/8 CTO directly to the flash heads (which actually worked pretty well just by itself with the MPE-65mm).
J.C.C. wrote:
Thanks for the info, John. I have looked at that Bogen Diffusion Kit for a while, but it has sat in my Wish List as I have been trying out different free material. I may just spend the money and check it out.
It sat in my wish list for quite a while -worth picking up though. I've got a lot of projects lined up for this winter and all of the material is going to come in handy...
M.junkie wrote:
how much better is your diffuser now compiared to the gary fong pop up puffer?
Almost a night and day difference: Better control over shadows, better specular highlights (not blown -there is detail behind them), and blowing the red channel is almost eliminated.
M.junkie wrote:
so u cut the plastic off and glue it over the ste-fen..and u also put a 1/8 CTO on it?and u use this on your mt-24ex 100% of the time now?
Yes, yes, and yes
I put a 1/8 CTO under a piece of light diffusion (a diffuser that blocks very little light. There are several sheets of different grades in the kit ) and I hot glued them directly to the flash heads (with the CTO against the flash head) then I added the Sto-Fen. You could stop there and get good light, but IMHO the Sto-Fens do not diffuse the light very well. So I removed the front plastic from the Sto-Fens and hot glued a piece of heavier diffusion material to them (there are three different grades in the kit).
The end results: I shot two of my son's Hot Wheels cars, one red and one blue. In the red car I could see every little scratch and dent and the histogram showed no blown reds. The blue car has some "chrome" areas that are like shooting a mirror and although I did get a flashing highlights warning for some of the pixels in that part of the car it was so few that I wouldn't bother correcting it in post. As a final test I set the MPE-65 to 5x and I was shooting with my standard settings (F11, 1/250, ISO 100 and -1 FEC) and took a 6 frame burst. The flash fired on 5 of the 6 shots. I never shoot in burst mode, but it's a good way to see how much power the flash is dumping on each shot...
Dalantech wrote:
Almost a night and day difference: Better control over shadows, better specular highlights (not blown -there is detail behind them), and blowing the red channel is almost eliminated.
Yes, yes, and yes
I put a 1/8 CTO under a piece of light diffusion (a diffuser that blocks very little light. There are several sheets of different grades in the kit ) and I hot glued them directly to the flash heads (with the CTO against the flash head) then I added the Sto-Fen. You could stop there and get good light, but IMHO the Sto-Fens do not diffuse the light very well. So I removed the front plastic from the Sto-Fens and hot glued a piece of heavier diffusion material to them (there are three different grades in the kit).
The end results: I shot two of my son's Hot Wheels cars, one red and one blue. In the red car I could see every little scratch and dent and the histogram showed no blown reds. The blue car has some "chrome" areas that are like shooting a mirror and although I did get a flashing highlights warning for some of the pixels in that part of the car it was so few that I wouldn't bother correcting it in post. As a final test I set the MPE-65 to 5x and I was shooting with my standard settings (F11, 1/250, ISO 100 and -1 FEC) and took a 6 frame burst. The flash fired on 5 of the 6 shots. I never shoot in burst mode, but it's a good way to see how much power the flash is dumping on each shot......Show more →
ok.im going to buy every thing you said..il let you know when it arives
M.junkie wrote:
ok.im going to buy every thing you said..il let you know when it arives
Pick up the diffusion and the CTO material and if you like it then look for a way to permanently mount it to the MT-24EX. I used the Sto-Fens because I had them...
Sorry Adrian and Scott -maybe you can find it at a local camera shop (or an online site in the UK). I have a US mail stop that forwards my packages to a military base (I'm a civilian working in Italy for the DoD) so I only pay shipping to New York.
n0b0 wrote:
You have any comparison shots John? It'll be very useful to see them.
Not without cutting the hot glue that's holding the diffusers onto my flash
Seriously, I have two levels of diffusion (one hot glued directly to the flash heads) plus a 1/8 CTO on the flash -not practical to take all of it off since the only good comparison would have to include the bare flash heads -and I'd have to screen shot the histogram showing the three primary color channels as well...
I've tried a wide range of plastics (milk jug, fruit juice bottle, engineering samples from a company that makes diffuser plastic for LCDs, etc.) and IMHO there's just no substitute for a plastic that's actually designed to diffuse the light coming from a flash.
I'm curious as to what would make a good diffusion (light scattering) material vs just a light blocking material. For me it's always been trial and error. First I just take a photo to see if I like the quality of light produced, then I use a light meter to make sure it's not blocking too much light causing an increase in flash cycle time. Inexpensive rip-stop nylon is hard to beat....one stop loss and very nice light quality.
If there is more of a science to it, I'd be interested to hear it. I'm a bit of a geek and this sorta thing fascinates me.
i dont get it john.i thought the idea for the sto fen was to get the plastic about 1/4inch away from the flash head..but it looks like u have cut the end off? so really if i had the plastic and stuck both pieces of the heads it wouldn't be no different than the way u have done wit with the sto fen?i dont get why u used the sto fen if u can just stick them both to the heads?
im very happy with the defuser im all ready use aka gary fong but like u said before its hard to get shadows from these diffusers
