Boris, First of all, here are some pictures of my first generation el cheapo diffuser: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157606657830875/
I've found that they work better if you put aluminum foil along one side of it. If it is facing forward you want the foil on the bottom, shielding the lens from the light, if it is facing up, you want it on the back bouncing the light forward. They cost about two bucks to make, and work about as well as a fongdong. I call this sort of diffuser a "light grenade" because it sends the light out indiscriminately in all directions. But considering your locality, that might be a bad nickname for it. Rather than a grenade, you probably want something more like a photon-shotgun, a broad dispersal, but all in the same general direction. They also wouldn't blind the people next to you. The lumiquest diffusers that velcro onto the flash are pretty good for that. If you're cheap you could try doing something with a plastic jug that has foil on all four sides, leaving the front as a diffuser. Is there enough light that Galia could get shots from the wings without using the flash? On Nov 30, 2010, at 9:30 PM, Boris Liberman wrote: > Hi! > > The holidays are coming near and I'm having a couple of gigs at > Galia's class. One involved shooting the general rehearsal of the > little musical they've been making. Given the fact that the hall was > empty I could shoot as I pleased. So I also shot a number of shots > from the distance. > > My flash is Metz 40 MZ-2 which is a good flash. In particular it > auto-zooms as per the actual focal length taking into account the crop > factor of the camera. However, the ceiling of the hall wasn't the > ideal surface for bouncing and the distance (10m and upwards) was too > much to play the bounce game. So I ended up with many properly exposed > shots but with this ugly shadow behind everyone and everything. > > Is there a way to at least make these shadows less prominent during > the shoot? I reckon the likes of diffuser are necessary but I'd rather > ask someone who has direct experience with this, as I am total klutz > to all things flash. You really aren't going to have much luck significantly reducing shadows from the flash with anything at a distance that you can carry on your camera. If you can arrange things ahead of time (talk to the director) maybe you could hang some white foam core from the ceiling a few meters up. Angle it at a 45 degree angle so that it'll bounce the flash forward, towards the stage. > > Thanks. > > -- > Boris > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
