Flash diffuser? bounce card? what to get?

[inkista]

Originally Posted by KimberleyPhotography

Does anyone know why the planetneil.com is black? Wouldn't more light be bounced if it was white?

He wants the light to come from the bounce direction. If he'd made the inside of the half-snoot white, it would act like a catchlight panel/bounce card, and throw light forward directly from the flash--exactly what he's trying to avoid (it's stated down in the comments thread of that entry).

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

Im sure they were taken with a flash: i just dont think it was an external one. It looks like the (bad) result of what one would get with the pop-up flash

I don't think there's anything deceptive. If you use an external flash straight-on, instead of bouncing, it looks a lot like a pop-up flash. Where I think they're being mildly deceptive is in using such a wide-angle lens (looks like a fisheye to me). It's exaggerating the distance they are from the wall that they're illuminating with the flash. An omnibounce is a good tool if you know how to use it, but it's throwing your light in all directions so that it bounces back from all directions (hence the name). Because of the every-direction scattering, though, you have to pump out more power to the flash if you want more light in a specific direction. Your working distance is relatively limited, and the softening effect only occurs if you have a lot of bounce surfaces around you; it's not the omni-bounce per se that's diffusing the light--it's the walls/ceilings the light's being bounced off that do that.

Omnibounces outdoors are always problematic because any light that can't be bounced back is lost. I once saw a woman with an omnibounce on her flash at the zoo. We were shooting a snow leopard outside about 20' away with telephotos. I'm still trying to figure out why she thought that would help. There wasn't any bounce to make the light bigger and more diffuse or anything. And she was losing most of the light she was throwing out there. Oh, well, her pics, not mine.

[Invalid]

Sorry for the late reply and thank you for all the help guys. I think I'm going to hold off on this purchase and probably just play around with making a better bounce card.

Although, I can't stand that guy in the video for some reason.

Thanks!