Photo
Flash diffuser
To begin with, you should make a “T”- shaped paper reflector yourself. It’s very easy to make: take an A4 sheet of paper. Fold it up in half along the longer side and cut out two sectors to the right and to the left towards the stem of the “T”-shaped reflector. You should paste over the sides of your reflector with sellotape for durability. Such reflector serves me faithfully for several months until it gets dirty. Then I just replace it with a new one.
The home-made reflector can be attached to the rotation head of the flash with an elastic band which allows changing its shape quickly or adapting it for a vertically positioned camera. This construction might seem unusual at first sight. The matter is that there are a lot of trendy reflectors at photo-shops. They look effective and beautiful in their own way but they aren’t user-friendly and are far less helpful than a home-made paper reflector. The rotation head can be tilted 60-70° upwards while the reflector itself can bend approximately 45° forward. Now the beam of light will be partially directed to the ceiling (if any) and reflected from it thus illuminating the room with a diffused ceiling light. The other part of the beam will be reflected by a paper reflector, not by its central part only but by the “wings” of the T-shaped figure as well and the object in the foreground will be illuminated from both sides by this diffused light. If the flash unit is working in TTL mode, it will produce as much light as it is necessary for proper illumination of the object.
The result of using a paper reflector is obvious. The light from the flash becomes more “intelligent”, it is no more as hard as that given by interior flashes. But when its necessary to make a vertical shot the paper reflector is still situated on one side towards the lens. The harsh side shadow must be avoided by placing the flash unit above the lens. The Stroboframe firm in America produces special frame brackets for various cameras. Their usage allows a photographer to change the position of the flash unit so that it is above the lens in the twinkle of an eye. Our shops sell such brackets and their domestic analogues. I’m not aware of their serviceability because I’ve been using a Stroboframe for about ten years and I’m fully satisfied with it.
A Stroboframe flash bracket with a paper reflector in a working position.
Flash brackets of this type are helpful in elimination of one more big drawback of flash usage – the “red-eye” effect. It is caused by direct light which passes to the eyeground and is reflected then from it like from a red mirror. Right inside the pupil appears a large red glare like that of a crucian or a vampire. The closer the flash is to the lens the easier its light reaches the eyeground. There are 2 solutions: either you ask the person to look somewhere else but not directly at the flash or raise the flash a little above the lens so that the light won’t reach the eyeground. Any flash bracket can solve this problem when photographing from small distances, however some steps behind from the photographed person is enough to lose this advantage. Nothing can be done with it. I use a paper reflector at photographing from the distance of no more than two metres and if I have to photograph more distant objects I set the rotation head to standard position bending back the paper reflector as I don’t need it anymore. The flash bracket goes on working in this case too.
You can make photographs illuminated by light similar to natural with the help of paper reflector and BACK flash mode which snaps the flash into action before closing the back curtain of the camera instead of doing it after the front curtain has been opened. In this mode the camera doesn’t limit the exposure time to 1/60th of a second. Exposure value can be any you like. The camera itself will open the curtain, complete the automatically determined task, and only then the flash will snap into action. The motion blur left by a moving person will remain behind his back what is more pleasant than having it ahead. If there’s enough light in the room or if it’s a sunny day, you can manually set the exposure correction value of -0,7 aperture point in order to avoid blur. It will allow using natural light as drawing light and the light coming from the flash will become the fill-in light. If a paper reflector is used this type of light will be almost imperceptible but at the same time it will spare difficulties with sharp contrast and normalize colour temperature. It’s especially important when shadows are illuminated with green luminescent light while main light from the window has standard colour temperature.
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