rscheffler
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 p.1 #13 · Best flash modifier for my canon 600EX-RT? | |
John Power wrote:
What if you are in a building with a high ceiling or outside.? How can you get any bounce in those situations?
jcolwell wrote:
Improvise. Without the Demb, I'll tilt the flash down about a third of the way. Might take a test shot or two. At least, we're not shooting film (well, I do, but not with flash) . With the Demb, I'd keep the flash pointing up and angle the Demb. It has a relatively large reflecting surface, and it's useful in many situations. Especially considering that it folds up to almost flat.
Also, using the flash pointing upwards, with the Demb reflector above it, gives great vertical separation, to help avoid the dread red eye.
If I want to cover more situations, then I go to off-camera flash. All you need is a Canon ST-E3-RT or YongNuo YN-E3-RT. I think the YN is better (I have two), as it also has IR-control. The Canon has only radio (RT), and it costs a lot more (I have one). Also, I understand that the reliability of the RT connection is not what it used to be. I haven't shot an event in at least ten years, when RT was great for multi-flash off-camera setups, in all kinds of awkward situations. More recently, it seems not uncommon to have the RT connection interrupted (or worse) by other signals on the same part of the EM spectrum. It's probably not going to get better. IR still works, for line of sight.
Anyway, your versatility is limited by what you're prepared to carry. The Demb is a minimalist solution, and it works surprisingly well....Show more →
Good points.
I stopped using on-flash bounce cards long ago after going digital. I use flash a lot less than I did with film and it's one less thing to carry. I just try to bounce indoors as much as possible and will use the flash's built-in bounce card for a bit of forward fill and catchlight in the eyes. For high ceilings one option is to zoom the flash head to something like 50 or 85mm, or more, so you get a tighter, brighter spot on the ceiling, but it's not really going to make a huge difference. Rather, the color/material of the ceiling will matter more. For on-camera flash attachments, IMO the most useful is some sort of orange gel to get closer to warm-white or tungsten lightbulb color temperature for better color balance with ambient.
I'm split between amused and puzzled when I see other photographers use flash outside and are tilting the head up, either in fully upward bounce position, or at a 45 degree angle. At 45 degrees you're getting maybe less than half the potential output on your subject in situations where the flash might already be struggling to supply enough power to balance direct sunlight. The only time it would make sense to me is if you don't want light on the foreground or lower half of the subject. Cards and typical on-flash diffusers outside also make little difference because there's nothing for the light to bounce off of and the size of the diffuser is relatively small to the subject distance, unless you're doing closer distance portraits. For something like this to make an appreciable improvement in light diffusion, it would need to be at least a couple feet in diameter, at which point you're maybe better to put something on a light stand. The thing I learned shooting with a seasoned wedding photographer for ~10 years was to look for 'environmental lighting support.' For example, the sunlit white wall of a building makes a great reflector and potentially huge, soft light source. And if lucky, the area being lit by the white wall will actually make for a nice photo.  Or keeping your subject in the shade at the edge of a tree line allows for good quality diffused light from the sky, whether cloudy or not. And to pay attention to the color cast of reflected light, such as how sunlight reflecting up off lawns results in unpleasant green fill light. Same with light reflecting off surrounding foliage (why we typically avoided situations surrounded by trees and instead worked along the edges). At a location, I'll check for potential spots, then look in the direction that would be behind the camera position to evaluate what the quality of light coming from that direction.
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