New Softbox Trial

garyt

I recently purchased a new Lumiquest softbox to try and eliminate some of the harsh flash reflections I was getting on some of the more relfective critters. Moved the flash from over top of the lens to the right side, lowered it as much as I could, and angled it in a bit. Only problem with this is the size of the rig with the flash hanging off the side and trying to get into tight quarters. Found a couple of subjects to try ot out on. Results are attached. Comments welcome.

Click for larger images.





Like the idea of the reflections in the window on this shot. Only wish I had the foresight to clean it first.

Lord Vetinari

Looks promising Gary - you'll need to do a few more shots and see what you think. It's not just the reflections on the subject but general brightness of backgrounds etc that should also be lighter I think. I nearly always get some reflection on a ladybird - it just depends a lot on the angles.
My yardstick for a diffuser is that you should get results that look halfway between a full sun shot (very harsh) and a cloudy day shot (soft with nice colour). Too much diffusion and you start to lose detail which relies on high contrast changes.

Brian V.

Skippy

garyt wrote:

I recently purchased a new Lumiquest softbox to try and eliminate some of the harsh flash reflections I was getting on some of the more relfective critters. Moved the flash from over top of the lens to the right side, lowered it as much as I could, and angled it in a bit. Only problem with this is the size of the rig with the flash hanging off the side and trying to get into tight quarters. Found a couple of subjects to try ot out on. Results are attached. Comments welcome.

Click for larger images.
Like the idea of the reflections in the window on this shot. Only wish I had the foresight to clean it first.

Hi Gary, dealing with reflections is not easy at all.
I usually end up having to edit some of those highlights out of my shots.

Angles and Reflections can sometimes be a MACRO nightmare.

I'm interested to see more of your experiments with this Diffuser Gary.
....... Skippy
.

garyt

Brian/Skippy--thanks for the comments.

Brian-I've been paying a lot of attention to where the reflection is on the pic's on the forum's. You can tell a lot about what type of flash is used and where it is placed. Hopefully, I'm learning something about positioning and reflections in the process. Thanks for the advise. I'll keep working with it. I can't get mine quite as low as some of you guys, because it has not twisting capability, and only moves in the one plane. I only wish there was more to shoot around here now.