Recommend Me A Flash Diffuser Please!

Okay Richard - I'll see if I can put up some comparisons, because the difference were very noticeable. Mine (with Stofen), nicely balanced with available light, Wifes (without Stofen on my recommendation - thank you Richard!!!!!) overly bright party flash with the same settings and lens. Curious - but I she's calmed down a bit.

Better luck tomorrow (both of us will be using Stofens btw)

Steve
 
stevedunster said:
Okay Richard - I'll see if I can put up some comparisons, because the difference were very noticeable. Mine (with Stofen), nicely balanced with available light, Wifes (without Stofen on my recommendation - thank you Richard!!!!!) overly bright party flash with the same settings and lens. Curious - but I she's calmed down a bit.

Better luck tomorrow (both of us will be using Stofens btw)

Steve
Click to expand...

From that description, it sounds like the difference is at least partly an exposure balance issue, between the flash and the ambient, rather than the Stofen.

While the camera settings may have been the same, the Exif doesn't report the flash output (at least I don't think it does, only any compensation applied).

The E-TTL should sort it out, but I can see that it's possible that the Stofen throwing extra light on the surroundings could have influenced the flash output. Distance tends to have an influence too. And off-centre subjects also fool the flash unless you use the FEL* button, over-exposing the flash subject. Were you both using E-TTL?

Either way, if it's an exposure balance issue, what I do it is set Av and tweak the background exposure with +/- compensation on the camera, and adjust flash exposure with +/- compensation on the gun. Very easy and works a treat.
 
Thanks Richard

...but I think we thought all that. We took turns to stand on the same spot, with the same focal length, with the same manual shutter and aperture (metered from incident light meter), with the same ISO and with the same FEC.

We were shooting on the same single AF point, at the same subject (though we repeated this on other subjects too with the same result), and checked the CFns were the same.

We then took turns to remove the stofen. Whoever shot with the stofen consistently had the nicer shot.

The we went round the place shooting with 1) available light only, 2) available light without stofen, 3) available with stofen

We've always shot with stofens and got used to balancing available and flash light very nicely...but not until this thread did I wonder about what it actually does and I was happy to concede that maybe there are circumstances that it does nothing except waste power.

....but after yesterday's results...both stofens stay on! Don't know why and even stofen's internet site seems to imply what you say Richard.

Odd stuff eh!
 
stevedunster said:
Thanks Richard

...but I think we thought all that. We took turns to stand on the same spot, with the same focal length, with the same manual shutter and aperture (metered from incident light meter), with the same ISO and with the same FEC.

We were shooting on the same single AF point, at the same subject (though we repeated this on other subjects too with the same result), and checked the CFns were the same.

We then took turns to remove the stofen. Whoever shot with the stofen consistently had the nicer shot.

The we went round the place shooting with 1) available light only, 2) available light without stofen, 3) available with stofen

We've always shot with stofens and got used to balancing available and flash light very nicely...but not until this thread did I wonder about what it actually does and I was happy to concede that maybe there are circumstances that it does nothing except waste power.

....but after yesterday's results...both stofens stay on! Don't know why and even stofen's internet site seems to imply what you say Richard.

Odd stuff eh!
Click to expand...

Thanks for your comments Steve. Be interesting to see the results, just to know what's going on. It seems like you did a great side by side comparison.

Bottom line must be that the Stofen is never going to be worse (than a bounce card or direct flash) and sometimes usefully better, even in circumstances that don't appear to play to its greatest strengths.

Stofens are just so easy to use, pretty robust, and don't look silly ;)
 
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