Photography Thailand Forum

[gregoire]

Sometimes I have to shoot portraits on location, which in some cases means no other choice but to use flash . Does anyone have any experience with small softboxes that fit on flashes (as the ones sold at this Singaporean shop--they have two models: some kind of inflatable softbox and a "soft-dome diffuser")? I'm thinking of getting one for my flash, connecting the flash with a cable of a 1-2 meters, and seeing how that works. What do you guys think of that? Any shops in Thailand offer this kind of accessory? Any other ideas for getting softer light (when bouncing off a surface is not an option)? Does anybody do this kind of stuff and have pics to share of their results?

[Reaper]

Gregoire,

Got some stuff from PPCP when I went to Singapore in July... (Went to college with one of persons involve with PPCP  ).  You might want to try the Flip-it! as an alternative to the soft dome.  I did see it for sale in Bangkok (I think it was in Fortune town on the 2nd floor) but it cost about 500 Baht  :'(.  Planning to go to Singapore in December; planning to pick up some more stuff. 

Reaper

[gregoire]

Finally, I got a mini-softbox you velcro onto your flash from Fotofile@MBK and it cost a fortune, something like 2400 baht or so. I doesn't soften the light at all. It's pretty much useless.

[Marc Schultz]

Finally, I got a mini-softbox you Velcro onto your flash from Fotofile@MBK and it cost a fortune, something like 2400 baht or so. I doesn't soften the light at all. It's pretty much useless.

Unfortunately I found most of these devices don't do much to change the light from an on camera flash. I use one of those Stofen Omni Bounce units (http://www.stofen.com/store/omni.asp) on my flashes and tilt the flash up at a 45 degree angle to reduce the directness of the flash. If you are shooting in a low ceiling area you will get a bit of bounce from the ceiling too when pointing it up.

I have also seen a number of inexpensive copies of the Stofen design selling in camera shops around Bangkok and they even make some of them in different colors too as a color filter. Bear in mind though that all of these things reduce the power of your light by a stop or two so you will need to compensate for that.

If you really want to improve contrast though, and reduce flatness of the light coming from the flash, you are going to need to use the flash as a remote slave from the side of the subject at an angle of at least 30 degrees off the camera in order to increase contrast at all.

The bottom line is, even if you do something to soften the light with an attachment, you are not going to gain any contrast or moodiness in your lighting unless you change the direction of the flash from being exactly from the same direction the camera is shooting from. Meaning, you have to get the flash off of the camera for the light to really look any better.

I hope that helps and this is probably something that is never explained when they are selling all these flash attachment gadgets.

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--Nothing like a timely reply.  

[Marc Schultz]

Marc--Nothing like a timely reply.  

Yes, Inspration can sometimes takes years to evolve :)

And what would I have ever done if they asked me to build Rome in a day?

[wmusick]

 Try a ring flash. The real ones cost about 15,000 baht but you can bet a mirrored contraption that fits over your speedlight that works just as well. They start at about 1500 baht. Great effect. If you look in magazines you can always tell when one is used because there will be small pinpoint lights in the center of the eyes of the subject. If you can add an off-camera soft box it even gets better.

I'll post an example soon.

Bill