This week we’ve tested six top flashgun diffusers that soften the light for more subtle results. Find out how they rated.

Interfit Strobies Octobox, Flex Mount

Price: £33
Buy: www.interfitphotographic.com
This kit comprises a 30cm octagonal softbox and a ‘flex mount’ for your specific flashgun. It’s fiddly to put together and its front diffusion panel and flex mount lack a firm grip. It has to be used off-camera, but softens the light well.

SCORE: 3/5

LumiQuest UltraSoft

Price: £26
Buy: www.newprouk.co.uk
Compact when folded flat, the UltraSoft is easy to set up, but you’ll need to apply the Velcro pads to your flashgun to hold it in place. It’s used with the flashgun in an upright orientation, so there’s no problem with using it on or off-camera. The effect is only moderate.

SCORE: 3/5

Lastolite Brolly Grip Kit
Price: £27
Buy: www.lastolite.com
Amazing value, this kit contains a 50cm translucent brolly that slides into a hand grip that attaches to most flashguns (not Sony fit) via the hotshoe plate. It also has fitments for lighting stand mounting. It softens light very effectively, but needs to be used off-camera.

SCORE: 5/5

Lastolite Ezybox Speed-Lite
Price: £52
Buy: www.lastolite.com
This mini softbox is a much sturdier fit than the Octobox, despite not requiring Velcro pads. Measuring about 25x25cm, you can use the softbox with the flashgun on-camera, but not with a wide-angle lens. Silvered inner sides and dual diffusing screens soften the light well.

SCORE: 4/5

Lastolite Micro Apollo 60 II
Price: £32
Buy: www.lastolite.com
Measuring about 25x18cm, this is a bit shorter than the Speed-Lite, and set-up time is just a few seconds instead of a couple of minutes. A revised internal frame adds rigidity and the flashgun can be used on or off-camera, but it’s a bit flimsy and not as effective as the Ezybox.

SCORE: 3/5

Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce
Price: £18
Buy: www.newprouk.co.uk
The push-fit Omni-Bounce is a translucent dome that’s made to suit specific flashguns. With a flashgun’s bounce head angled at about 45°, some light is fired forward, but light is also bounced off surrounding walls and ceilings. It’s effective indoors, but not so useful outdoors.

SCORE: 4/5

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What are they?
Compact flashguns will usually fit in a spare pocket for carrying around, and they’re very lightweight as well, making them travel-friendly. Even so, they offer considerably more power and versatility than a camera’s built-in pop-up flash.

How do they work?
The vast majority of modern compact flashguns are ‘dedicated’ models, designed to work with specific makes of camera. They enable through-the- lens (TTL) flash metering and flash status display in the viewfinder.

Unlike the pop-up flash built into most camera bodies, most also feature a bounce head, which helps to produce a softer lighting effect.

Who makes them?
The Canon 270Ex ii and Nikon SB-400 are very popular, and other camera manufacturers make their own compact flashguns. independent favourites include the Metz 24-AF1 and Sunpak rD2000. Nissin’s ‘compact’ flashgun is the Di466, but we think it’s a bit on the big side.

When should I use them?
Not only for indoor shots and after dark, compact flashguns are equally useful in bright sunshine. They’re ideal for filling in shadows when taking portraits on sunny days.

How do I attach them to my SlR?
Like any regular flashgun, they attach to an SLR via its hotshoe. However, it’s well worth investing in an off-camera connection cable, to enable more versatile lighting effects.

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With a Guide Number of 58, full manual, two slave modes and a multi flash feature it’s the perfect camera accessory for strobist photography or anyone wanting to get into off-camera flash.

In the short video below Ali from our testing team explains why he loves the Yongnuo YN560-II.

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Before

Bounce flash photography. It sounds like a complicated procedure, one of those mythical flash techniques we try desperately to avoid.

We’ve all been there. You’re at a party or gathering and want to take a picture that captures the atmosphere of the moment. When shooting in low light, your first instinct is probably to use a tripod with a long shutter speed, or increase the ISO to shoot handheld.

But if you’re taking pictures of people indoors at a party you can forget the first option; your subjects won’t keep still! A high ISO can often work because it preserves atmosphere. But you get grainy pictures and have to use the widest aperture and slowest shutter speeds possible.

Using a bounce flash technique is your most flexible option in this scenario, and it’s also remarkably easy to do. You can stay mobile, and you have a greater range of shutter speeds and apertures to choose from. You can also use a low ISO setting to retain image quality.

By bouncing flash off the ceiling or a wall, rather than firing it directly at your subject, your flash light becomes more diffuse and even. As such, pictures that employ bounced flash look much more natural. In fact, if this bounce flash technique is done well, people won’t be able to tell that flash has been used at all.

Most external flashguns have a bounce flash facility, though some have more flexibility to turn and tilt the head. All modern guns also have a TTL, or through-the-lens, mode. This ensures that the extra power needed from the flash is set automatically.

But be warned, as bounce flash techniques can sometimes look bland if the light is just too even! Portraits also lack sparkle, as eyes don’t have ‘catchlights’ (the small, bright reflections of flash in people’s eyes). To add these, use the pull-out ‘bounce card’ found on many hotshoe guns. This white plastic sheet directs some of the flash output straight at the subject, giving a smidge of direct light and adding mirror-like catchlights. So without further ado…

Bounce Flash Photography in 4 Simple Steps

Step 1: Control the exposure
The camera and flash can be set to take care of the flash exposure for you, even when you’re bouncing the light. Set the flashgun to its TTL mode. Use the Aperture Priority (A) exposure mode on your digital camera, so that you can set a wide aperture that suits most portraits.

Step 2: Find the right surface
Check the colour of the ceiling; white is ideal, but off-white will do. We’re used to things being lit from above, so ceilings provide natural-looking illumination. You can bounce flash off a white wall too, as this can look like window light.

Step 3: Pull out the bounce flash card!
The secret weapon for making bounce flash portraits look alive, with engaging catchlights in your subject’s eyes, is a white plastic bounce card. This slots in above the flash and is pulled out with the wide-angle diffuser. Remove both, then push back the diffuser.

Step 4: Compensation culture
Look at your results carefully on the back of your digital camera, checking the histogram for signs of both over- and underexposure. If the flash isn’t bright enough, or is too bright, use the flash exposure compensation facility to increase or decrease the light level.

After

7 quick bounce flash photography tips

Tip 1: Use fresh batteries
Bounce flash needs four times more power than direct flash. Use fresh batteries and take spares so a flash recycles fast.

Tip 2: Increase your ISO
Don’t leave ISO set at 100. To prolong battery life and speed up recycle times, boost sensor sensitivity to at least ISO400.

Tip 3: Shoot in raw
Colour balance, contrast and exposure issues are common with flash. Shoot in RAW (or RAW+JPEG) to correct problems later on.

Tip 4: Use what’s available
Not all flashguns have a bounce card to give frontal fill and catchlights. But a bit of card and a rubber band will do just as well.

Tip 5: Try white paper
For vertical-format shots, the bounce card will be in the wrong place. Hold white paper behind the flash head instead.

Tip 6: Ceiling the deal
Make sure your ceiling is white, or near white, or your subject will be the colour of the paintwork!

Tip 7: Find a new angle
If the ceiling is too high, angle your flashgun so it lets you bounce flash off a white wall behind or beside you.

For many people, flash is that horrid burst of light that ruins indoor photographs, stripping scenes of all atmosphere whenever it goes off. However, when it’s used correctly, flash can be the saviour of many an image, and shouldn’t be confined to being used in darkness. For example, a subtle burst of flash can be used to fill in shadows when shooting portraits of people with their backs to the sun. This means no more squinting, or dark shadows where the eyes should be. Instead, the flash turns what might otherwise be a silhouette into an evenly lit image. Here’s a quick guide to what you need to know…

Flash sync

Traditionally, the flash operates at 1/60 sec. This means that when you’re using flash, the shutter speed is set to 1/60 sec and the flash is synchronised to fire while the shutter is open. However, modern cameras take advantage of the fact that the flash duration is extremely short, and offer higher ‘sync’ speeds of around 1/200 sec or 1/250 sec.

Naturally, there’s nothing to stop you using slower shutter speeds, and this can be particularly useful for balancing the illumination of the flash with ambient lighting for a more natural look. This is often referred to as ‘slow-sync’ flash.

Rear curtain sync

Most flashes work in what’s known as ‘front curtain’ mode. The term itself is a hangover from film days, but it basically means that the flash fires just after the shutter opens. Rear curtain sync is a flash menu option that will fire the flash at the end of the exposure, just before the shutter closes. To understand what this means in practical terms, imagine shooting a car coming towards you at night using a long shutter speed of, say, three seconds. Front curtain flash would illuminate the car for an instant at the beginning of the exposure, after which only the light trails would register as the car moved across the frame; the result would be an image with a stream of lights stretching out in front of the car. Rear curtain flash, on the other hand, would illuminate the car for an instant at the very end of the exposure, after the car and its lights had moved across the frame. The result would be a much more natural-looking image, with the light trails stretching out behind the car.

Red-eye reduction

Red-eye is caused by light from the flash reflecting off the red blood vessels at the back of a person’s eyes and into the lens. Red-Eye flash mode reduces the problem by firing pulses of light just before the main flash, to narrow the pupils of the subject’s eyes and reduce the amount of light reflected back. In practice, however, it works poorly, if at all, and the pre-flash pulses usually make for unnatural expressions in your subjects. It’s easier to get rid of red-eye in Photoshop Elements or CS.

Flash metering

Through the Lens (TTL) flash metering takes much of the complexity out of calculating flash exposures. In this mode, the camera registers the amount of light falling onto the sensor during the exposure and adjusts the power of the flash accordingly. Some cameras have a flash value (FV) or flash exposure lock (FEL) button. This is useful for getting a good overall exposure in a complex scene, as you can zoom in on the object you want to expose correctly, fire off a test flash, and the camera will remember the correct flash level.

Built-in flash

In fully-automatic mode, the pop-up flash fitted to most SLRs activates when light levels are low. However, in the more creative modes you can pop the flash up manually whenever you like, and use it for adding a little extra illumination. Bear in mind that you’ll be limited to shutter speeds that are the same as or lower than the flash’s maximum flash sync speed – usually 1/200 sec or 1/250 sec. Other limitations of built-in flash units include the risk of red-eye and the fact that the flash won’t fire in certain scene modes. Also, you might have to remove the hood from your lens to prevent it from casting a shadow across the image.

Off-camera flash

Having a flash fixed just above your camera is limiting, not least because it tends to create harsh shadows. Taking a hotshoe flashgun off-camera means it can be directed with more control, and if required can produce more even and flattering light. Some cameras feature wireless flash connectivity, enabling you to trigger multiple flashes wirelessly, but all SLR cameras can be fitted with an off-camera cord. These enable you to connect the flashgun to the hotshoe and fire it remotely.

Back to: Choosing a lens

Forward to: Image editing, printing & storing

Tripod

With image stabilisers in lenses and camera bodies, tripods aren’t quite as essential as they used to be. But if you’re shooting night scenes, working at extreme magnifications, or you just want to frame your shot with more care, you’ll still need one. A good, sturdy budget model will cost around £150. Select one that extends to your eye level without the need to extend the centre column – otherwise you’re essentially turning it into a less stable monopod. Look for multi-angle legs – useful for shooting in rough terrain – and make sure you top it with a good quality, sturdy tripod head.

Remote release

This enables you to fire the shutter without touching the camera, so you can get sharp results when using slow shutter speeds. Ensure the remote has a lock function, so you can take long exposures at night without having to keep the button pressed. Remotes are camera-specific, so be sure to buy one that’s compatible.

Flashgun

For good flash photography with an SLR, invest in a decent flashgun. Third-party models are available, but to make full use of your camera’s advanced features it’s best to buy a flashgun from the same manufacturer. Look for a head that you can tilt and swivel, as this will enable you to bounce the light off ceilings and walls.

Camera bag

A protective bag keeps your camera and other accessories safe. Backpacks are ideal when you’re travelling long distances, although shoulder bags give you quicker access to your gear. Try to find a bag with more compartments than you’ll need, so that your gear can expand into it as your collection grows.

Vertical grip

Vertical grips enable you to fit two batteries into your camera, providing extra shooting capacity. And with an extra shutter-release button and other key camera controls, they can make it easier and more comfortable to use the camera vertically. Some models also increase the camera’s continuous drive rate.

Microphone

Anyone that’s serious about recording high-quality video using an SLR will have a camera with a microphone input socket. This allows you to get much higher quality audio than relying on the camera’s built-in mic. There are many third-party hotshoe-mounted mics to choose from, although Rode mics are popular.

Filters

To protect your lens from scratches, fit a UV or Skylight filter – Hoya specialise in these. There are also three creative filters that you might like to consider:

• A circular polariser, used to minimise reflections on water and glass, and make clouds stand out in blue skies
• ND grads, used to balance exposures in landscapes when the sky is much brighter than the foreground
• NDs (or ‘straight NDs’), used to achieve long exposure times and motion-blur, especially in running water

Memory cards

Memory cards with large storage capacities, such as 32Gb, enable you to capture masses of photos and video clips. However, do consider multiple, medium-capacity cards for important events such as weddings and holidays. That way, if a card develops a fault (rare, but it does happen), you won’t lose everything you’ve shot.

Back to: Image editing, printing & storing

Forward to: Looking after cameras