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Three modifiers to improve your light when working with on-camera flash

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The camera’s hotshoe is generally the last place you want to place a flash as your main light source. Sometimes, though, it can’t be helped. It’s common at weddings and events where you’re constantly walking around looking for the shot. It’s more about the memory than the quality of the light. Although that doesn’t mean we should neglect it entirely.

This video from photographer Ed Verosky shows us three ways we can modify the light coming from a flash on top of our camera. Ed admits that none of these solutions is ideal, but then putting a flash on the camera isn’t ideal, either. But these can go some way towards reducing that harshness of a bare, direct on-camera flash.

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Learn how to get the perfect light on your subject with this light modifiers comparison

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When a photographer decides to use flash, it typically starts something like this. Photographer posts online asking which flash to buy, gets a lot of responses, and buys a flash of some sort. They go and shoot with it, and are then disappointed with the look of hard light. So, the next logical step is to post online again asking “Which modifier should I get?”.

The problem is, it’s not that simple. We’ve no idea what look you want to go for. It’s something only you can decide yourself. Your vision is your vision, not ours. But without seeing what they all do, knowing what to get is impossible. So, have a watch of this video from Jay P. Morgan at The Slanted Lens. Jay goes through a whole series of different modifiers to show what they do to the light falling on your subject.

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This modifier comparison shows off over 100 different lighting setups

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Flash modifier comparisons can be extremely useful things. Without having to get up out of the comfort of our chair, we can very quickly and easily see how different shapes and sizes of modifier affect how light falls on our subject. Here’s one we discovered by photographer Michael Quack and the team at Visual Pursuit comparing a very wide array of Hensel modifiers.

Hensel modifiers aren’t exactly inexpensive, but if you want the best quality, you generally have to pay the highest prices. While you may not be specifically looking at buying Hensel gear, it’s still a useful comparison. With the subject, lights and photographer remaining the same for each shot, you can quickly get a feel for the differences that modifier design can make in your image.

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The StrobiStrip is the slimmest speedlight strip light adapter available and it’s collapsible

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Strip lights have become quite popular over the last couple of years, and we’ve seen numerous options released compatible with both speedlights, as well for continuous light.

The StrobiStrip from Strobius presents something unique, not seen in these types of light modifiers before.  As well as being extremely thin, and usable with pretty much every speedlight ever made, the StrobiStrip is also collapsible, with the StrobiStrip 50 breaking down into a small pouch not much bigger than your average 105mm lens.

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Create big light from small flashes with a Chinese Lantern paper lamp shade

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Speedlights often go hand in hand with shooting portraits on the street, especially at night, but small flashes have one big issue.  Due to their size, they often give very hard, harsh and unflattering light, especially if you’re forced to use one on the hotshoe.

After being asked to photograph a night time outdoor music event, and wanting the minimise the risk to expensive equipment, photographer Tom Simone came up with a DIY solution to help make that light a little bigger and provide a more pleasing look with help from a Chinese paper lantern lampshade.

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How To Make the World’s Best Lighting Modifier for $5

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Lighting modifiers can have a huge impact on specialized shots.  With the right ones, light becomes putty in your hand, easily molded by the skill of the potter.  (Yeah, I jumble up my euphemisms frequently.)

YouTuber Theoria Apophasis believes in the the power of light modifiers, but he believes even more in ingenuity.  The “Angry Photographer” shared one of his favorite homemade mods to get creative lighting that adds drama to his images.  This is one of the best lighting mods and can be easily created with craft store supplies for $5.

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This Clever Strobe Case Transforms Into a Reflector

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Here is a clever idea. A Strobe case that turns into a reflector. There are many strobe soft reflectors out there, but none that double duties as a strobe case. The LP742 from LumoPro is a transformer of a case that doubles as either a full reflector (think Flash Bender) or a small flag (think speedstrap flag thingy).

The case is actually made from three parts: a velcro strap and a case with two reflective prats that zips into one piece.

When assembled, the case is a regular holster, but when the zipper opens, each of the two parts can be velcroed to a strobe on its black side (for flagging light) or on the reflective side (for extra reflection).

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Save Precious Studio Space With This Strip Light Rack

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I recently moved into a new studio. It is bigger than my last one, so I absolutely had to get more gear to match its size. Here is something I learnt in the process. While softboxes and stripboxes are small when folded if you want to have them readily available, they take up quite a bit of space.

My solution to this problem was to build a Striplight rack where I could easily store any unused striplight in its natural state, while not taking too much real-estate in the studio.

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Comparing 7 Common Light Modifiers

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Guest post by Robert Mitchell. Hit the bottom of the post to see his links.

When assembling a lighting kit, it’s very difficult to know which modifiers are best for the type of work you want to do, and sometimes you don’t know or are discovering what you want to shoot. There are reflectors, umbrellas, square and rectangular softboxes, octabanks and a wide variety of accessories to shape and alter the quality of light.

So how do you know what’s best for you?

In many cases you don’t. If you have no experience then you don’t have any preferences formed and most of the tech talk is of no use to you and makes little sense. One person’s preference may not at all be what you like and it may not work within your budget.

I’ve chosen 7 common light modifiers of varying sizes and shapes, and I’m using modifiers that are , for the most part, inexpensive. Nothing very small and nothing terribly large. This is not an in-depth review, nor is it a light modifier showdown.

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How To Build A Focusable Parabolic Reflector

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Focusable parabolic reflectors may not be your first lighting modifier as they are big and require a lot (A LOT) of power, but once you start using them it is pretty hard to go back. To top that, they are also pretty expensive. The medium branded ones are around $800 while a top brand like Broncolor will set you back about $2,400.

If you still want to drive test one of those and at the stage where you have more time than money, Dennis Christian put a tutorial together on building one from scratch (or almost scratch….).

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