Folding Flash Diffuser

Morning all,

Has anyone used one of these at all.

I'm looking at something to diffuse my flash to do some macro work and saw a guy on YouTube using one.

Just wondered if anyone had any experience of them or is there anything else cheap about.

I presume it would need attaching to the lens in front of the flash to get the right bounce?

Thanks all

In years gone by, I can remember using a simple white handkerchief and it worked well.

Cheers John.

I have a built in diffuser on the speedlite I have but was thinking that by using a wide defuser like in the image, it would spread the light across the image more. I don't know this, but it did cross my mind

The built in 'diffuser' in a typical flash unit is NOT a true diffuser, it merely spreads the amount of area of the subject which is illuminated...for example, rather than being limited to the FOV of a 24mm it is spread to cover the FOV of a 16mm lens or 20mm lens.

Real 'diffusion' means that the light source is noticably larger in surface area than the original unaltered source of light. A typical flash lens might be 1.5" x 2.5", and even with the wide angle 'diffuser' it is still a mere 1.5" x 2.5"...no larger at all. If you flip up the 'catchlight' panel found on Canon flash units, it still is only about the same area as the flash lens...it merely reflects some light to the portrait subject's eyes while the flash head is pointed upward at 60 or 90 degrees (where the ceiling itself becomes the 'light source' and serves as a true 'diffuser' of light).

For macro work, if you use something to make the apparent size of the 'light emitter' bigger than the original 1.5" x 2.5", you begin to make it a 'diffuser'...a 5" x 7" softbox on the front of the flash is dimensionally small, but relative to the size of your subject when it is only 10" away, that 5" softbox is really big! Using a 16" x 20" softbox would be a HUGE light source.

That MCLseller product is 30cm across, or just under 12" across. The bulti-in flash is usually an eTTL flash and the body controls the amount of light emitted by the flash. That should work, but years ago a number of us found that eTTL flash with a softbox in front of the flash had inconsistent exposure results. So I would be cautious and evaluate your results at home before using it for real on real subjects to make photos that mattered to you.

Thanks for the help Wilt.

Apologies, but if it wasn't clear, I do have a speedlite that i'll use behind the diffuser. I'm shooting with a Canon 6dMkII without a built-in flash so whatever I buy, will be attached to either the lens (as per the pictured diffuser) or around/in front of the flash unit

tuttifrutti wrote in post #19072208
Thanks for the help Wilt.

Apologies, but if it wasn't clear, I do have a speedlite that i'll use behind the diffuser. I'm shooting with a Canon 6dMkII without a built-in flash so whatever I buy, will be attached to either the lens (as per the pictured diffuser) or around/in front of the flash unit

To be clear, the past testing that indicated inconsistet flash exposure errors when a minisoftbox was used, involved external flash units of both Canon and non-Canon (Metz) origin.
Oddly, while flash pointed upward to ceiling bounce to illuminate subject DOES work generally, the placement of softbox on a flash pointed forward (both at 0 degrees or slightly upward even) yielded inconsistent flash exposure. Admittedly such testing was done over decade ago, by myself and a POTN moderator, butI cannot state if this issue is still present in the most recent camera models and external eTTL flashes.

Thanks Wilt. That's very interesting to read.

I would like to think that 10 years later that things have moved on and maybe like you say, flashes have improved over that time period.

I see plenty of youtube videos with people using some sort of external flash with a diffuser so I can only imagine that it's a lot better now.

Time will tell for me I guess

Cheers for your input