430EX and diffusion

When shooting indoor, low light, high ceilings, no close walls, or out side at night, I want to use my flash head on. The 430EX has a diffuser built in (intended for wide angle shots), but is this enough diffusion in gnereral? I have an Xti, so I hate to increase ISO to its limit. Is there another diffuser for these situations that I should be looking at or is the built-in one about as good as I can do?

Thanks.

Indoors I like the Lumiquest ProMax System. It gives me the option of the 80/20 and inserts of white, gold, silver to direct light forward only when I have no ceiling. It does work much better with a camera rotating bracket.

Outdoors I point the flash direct.

I like the soond of this Promax but to date have only used Stofen or a bounce card ...
I like the bounce card option if the situation allows for it...i.e ceiling height colour etc..

Thanks, guys. So I take it that the wide angle diffuser on the 430X won't do too well.

How high of a ceiling are we talking about here?

Curtis has a thread about bouncing off of a high ceiling. I shot a bat mitzvah with 20 feet high ceilings by placing my flash in manual mode and setting it to 1/2 power and got really good results.

Actually it was just a general question, although I plan to shoot at a dinner out of town and was told that the celing was "real high" -- whatever that means. In the old days (film) I used to cover my flash with tissue paper. Of course, I wasn't all that good back then either. I'll keep the manual mode in mind for indoors. But I also like to shoot outdoor in dim or little light, such as the shot below. I had to use the burn tool in PS. Could this have been better with a diffuser?

I think your picture looks well exposed for your subjects as well as the background.

glockamole wrote in post #5858371
Could this have been better with a diffuser?

Unless you mean by diffuser, an umbrella, softbox, or something to enlarge your light source, then yes -- but by adding a omni-bounce or lightsphere, no, it would look exactly the same.

Nice photo.

glockamole wrote in post #5854946
When shooting indoor, low light, high ceilings, no close walls, or out side at night, I want to use my flash head on. The 430EX has a diffuser built in (intended for wide angle shots), but is this enough diffusion in gnereral? I have an Xti, so I hate to increase ISO to its limit. Is there another diffuser for these situations that I should be looking at or is the built-in one about as good as I can do?

Thanks.

Clipping a piece of tupperware onto your flash isn't going to change the quality of light, it's just going to make sure that less of it gets through to your subject, running your batteries down faster. "Diffusers" are meant to bounce light off of ceilings and walls, so if your problem is that a ceiling is too high to reach, that's certainly not going to solve it...

Glock,

Check out
http://www.dembflashpr​oducts.com/flipit/

You can pull the whitecared back, vertical and forward to throw more light. Joe has also introduced a diffuser in the front to throw light forward aswell.

Since you can vary the angle of the whitecard in seconds this is an extremely versatile helper for your flash.

For the lightbomb tupperware container (gary fong or look up Lambency flash diffuser on ebay) it has its place for experimentation indoors. I've had consistant fun results using it. Its heavy and bumblesome but it does have soft light but with little directional control due to its nature. The light can work well indoors in close proximity when theres little walls or ceilings to bounce off of but it may suck the batteries a tad.

The joe demb can be angled so it may give some directional light which may show some intential shadowing. Straight up will bounce the flash off ceiling.

I use the jumbo/diffuser combo and its a great way to play with the light. I also bought a spare large card aswell.