[LSD]

I'm extremely new to flash photography, but would like to do more of it, so I've been looking into a lot of different flash diffusers lately, and have been hearing a lot about the Gary Fong Lightsphere. I did some research, and saw that it's basically a piece of tupperware that fits over your flash, and costs a whopping $50!



I figured I'd try and make my own, and see what kind of results I could get. Here's what I ended up with.... I couldn't find the top for the tupperware, so I used aluminum foil instead... shiny stuff bounces light better anyway. All I did was take a random piece of tupperware, traced my flash out of the bottom, cut the hole with an exacto knife, and put tinfoil over the top. Fong says his lightsphere is only supposed to be used with the flashbulb pointing at the ceiling, so that's what I did too.

Here's my creation


Here it is in action


Here's my results... The doll wasn't moved at all in between pictures, nor did I move except to adjust flash head. Settings in the camera and flash were the same for all shots. All shots are straight out of the camera, no PP, only resized. They were shot at 1000ISO, so they're kind of noisy.

Direct flash



Unusable pictures. Can be adjusted with flash power and whatnot, but direct flash usually produces very harsh light from what I've seen.

Next, I bounced the flash off the ceiling, instead of pointing it direct.



Much better, but still some unsightly shadows since 90% of the light is hitting the subject at a downward angle.

Last, I threw the "LeeSphere" onto of the flash... both pictures were taken with the flash bulb pointed straight at the ceiling.



Does a pretty good job of diffusing the light, and has removed many of the shadows that were prevalent on the bounced shot.




Don't get me wrong, I would guess Fong's product would do a great job of this... much better than what I created. However, if anyone on here is like me (Broke), they have times they need soft, diffuse, even light, but $50 is a lot of money to spend on something that has very limited uses for the photography I do. This probably cost a total of $1-$3 to make, and for the money, seems to be very effective.


Just thought I'd share :D

[djdorifto]

love it :D

[LSD]

Originally Posted by djdorifto

love it :D

What can I say, I'm a cheap SOB. lol

[djdorifto]

whatever gets the job done my friend

[Darkrayne]

Nice job.. i paid for one of the Lightsphere II's here though they're like $90 AUD... works well though

[LSD]

Originally Posted by Darkrayne

Nice job.. i paid for one of the Lightsphere II's here though they're like $90 AUD... works well though

I still would like to own one... I guess we'll see how much I actually use the flash for portraits and whatnot, and gauge if it'd be worth it for me to purchase one.

[UdubBadger]

Yay i love arts and crafts!