Thanks for a great blog!

I just shot my second wedding using various tidbits from your site.
(In particular, your ‘black foamie thing’, which in my case is actually just a more-or-less A5 square of black paper attached to my speedlight with a hairband…)

Thanks again for all of the excellent advice and tips you offer so freely.

Regards,
Andrew Westran
Durban, South Africa
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37871415@N00/

David, for that vertical image, I had to hold my camera with my right-hand under the camera. I then bounced the flash slightly forward towards the model .. and therefore had to use the black foamie thing to block / gobo / flag my flash so that there is no direct flash. I turned the black foamie thing around on the flash-head so that it blocked direct flash. It really is as simple as that.

I don’t think it is possible to tell in advance what distance I can get out of bouncing my flash off surfaces like that .. but you might be surprised when you do try it out by how successful you are in situations where you thought you wouldn’t be able to. The key here though is to use a wide aperture, and as high an ISO as you are comfortable with.

Neil vN

Having just received my ABBC ultimate to replace my lightsphere I am loving the light it puts out, I can see the feathering in my pics, taking a little more time to think about taking pictures with it but not much….

My questions are these.

In the example above do you have the foam on the short side of the flash – I am guessing since its a port image you have it on the long side with the head at at about 35 degrees or so.

If I am correct in my assumption do you generally use your foam thing on the long side or short side of the flash ?

Again in the example above is the gobo side of the abbc on the camera left side of the flash

Would using the ABBC ultimate give you much (in this example) different light than the an all black ABBC and for bouncing flash, is an all black ABBC better than one with a small amount of white space ?

last but not least and guessing a hard one, what do you think is about the maximum distance you can get fairly usable bounced light from a surface like this.

thanks mate, sorry for all the questions

ciao

dp

Bob, it varies whether I take a test shot without flash first. In this instance, I did meter for the background with my camera’s built-in meter, and then took a test shot to confirm.

Neil vN

When you take your shots, do you usually take a shot without a flash then turn it on and take another? Or do you run with your flash on and adjust as needed?

Frank, the choice between TTL and TTL-BL becomes less important in a situation like this when you realize that either mode would’ve worked .. but might have needed different levels of flash exposure compensation. (FEC)

A test shot will indicate if you need more or less FEC to get the TTL flash exposure correct. I did dial down my FEC by another 0.3ev compared to my usual default setting.

Neil vN