DIY Gary Fong Lightsphere

[Kym]

I have to be 2nd shooter at a wedding on Saturday. Decided I needed a softer flash.
I had a look at the Gary Fong Lightsphere but a)I could not get one in time b) they are an expensive piece of plastic.

Hmmmm... Googled and found the following DIY version...
DIY Gary Fong Lightsphere- instructions

Then I checked the local IKEA...
RATIONELL drawer mat - transparent

A few dollars later I have one!

I took a few test shots of Nel (who won't let me publish them, no makeup and in her jammies ) - and it works a treat!

So I also still have a good length of the drawer mat left over, any SA locals that are interested can have a strip

[Kym]

FYI: The drawer mat is tougher and thicker than bubble wrap, holds it shape very well, and the 'bubbles' don't have air in them (and are smaller than bubble wrap).

Interesting material - there is a grey version - make sure you get the transparent one.

[SRR33]

Good to hear you saved a lot of money and did your own..

i was lazy and just bought one off ebay for like 5 bucks or something..

yea do post pics when you get the chance

[pollen]

These days most professional photographers tend to just bounce directly off a wall or ceiling. It tends to be much less cumbersome and gives quasi-studio results because you get directional lighting and don't end up with direct flash that you do when you use tupperware "diffusers". The trick is to get a surface in front of the subject (e.g. a wall/ceiling area behind you), and to get as large a surface as possible (e.g. intersection of 2 walls and a ceiling)

Actually I think Dennis Reggie the fairly famous U.S. photographer was the one who popularised the directional bare bounce technique, he calls it "foofing", the fact that he doesn't use a Gary Fong (or similar device) even though he was like his best man at his wedding tells you something

[TOM]

when King Gillette invented the safety razor, he was only interested in the money. the world didn't need a new razor, as straight edge (or cut throats as we Australians call them) still to this day provide the best shave. he was an inventor and had no more interest in razors or shaving than the next man.

[Kym]

These days most professional photographers tend to just bounce directly off a wall or ceiling. It tends to be much less cumbersome and gives quasi-studio results because you get directional lighting and don't end up with direct flash that you do when you use tupperware "diffusers". The trick is to get a surface in front of the subject (e.g. a wall/ceiling area behind you), and to get as large a surface as possible (e.g. intersection of 2 walls and a ceiling)

Actually I think Dennis Reggie the fairly famous U.S. photographer was the one who popularised the directional bare bounce technique, he calls it "foofing", the fact that he doesn't use a Gary Fong (or similar device) even though he was like his best man at his wedding tells you something

Sure - bounce when you can!

But there are many times where the ceiling is too high, wrong colour, wrong texture (straw types) etc.
This device is still a major advance in soft light on raw flash or the Stofen type attachments.

At the wedding on Saturday it helped in a big way at the service as there were no decent bounce surfaces.
The main two tog's had a couple of assistance holding umberllas etc. for some of their work and set-up portable lighting for some of the formal shots.

So if the choice is no bounce and using this sort of device - its simple!

[pollen]

Kym you do have another choice when you can't bounce: direct flash. This will be practically the same as using a Gary Fong when you can't bounce.

I understand the point you're making but I have a major disagreement with what you say, because in my mind the Gary Fong is a Bounce modifier. It too relies on bouncing otherwise only the direct flash component of it goes through. So in the absence of a bouncing surface (e.g. outdoors into the sky) the only flash will be direct flash. In those situations, you may as well just point the flash straight ahead, it will be identical. (Try going outdoors and photographing a person first with direct flash, then with the Gary Fong. The images would be near identical assuming you keep the parameters constant and are within the range of the (range crippled) flash. Theoretically, because the tupperware diffusers like the Fong are slightly larger than the bare flash head, you get a very slightly softer light but this is not noticeable in practice because the difference is so small.

With your other concerns, colour, high ceiling, texture, I have described the workarounds below:

Ceilings can rarely be relied upon, because of the shadows it casts and also because as you say it is often too high. Instead, you should try and find other surfaces to bounce off, such as people, poles, furniture etc. Here there was a brown, very high ceiling so I roosted the camera up on a Monopod and bounced off a window blind):


Here's another photo, the top photo is the scene showing where I was standing and where the models were coming out of. Normally fashion shoots are flash-less, but this one they had these awful spotlights which made available light photography unusable, so I had to use flash (nearly burned out my flash units too from the heavy usage). As you can see the ceiling was pretty gruesome (had slits and stuff that reflected back towards me (not evident in photo) so in the end I ended up bouncing off the silver poles you can see on the right. They provided a nice surface that reflected the light back (sample photos below). More importantly, they went in the direction I wanted.


In this one I did bounce off the ceiling (kind of, more like the intersection of celing and wall) Colour of the ceiling or texture is irrelevant because you can just colour correct the White Balance in RAW. You can't tell from this photo because I colour corrected it, but the ceiling was actually Gold and Textured Flowers (in this photo it looks silver/grey because I colour corrected the whole image):


Or a more extreme example, bouncing off a red painted wall (not visible in photo but it was actually more like crimson red) (excuse the poor quality photo it was just a test shot at a wedding):


As long as you photograph in RAW, colour correction is easy. The only problem is when you allow your ambient light to mix with the bounced flash too much (e.g. if you overexpose the ambient), then you get the mixed lighting effect which is correctable only by gelling your flash or by time consuming work (best to avoid this)

So yeah, you don't have to use diffuser/flash modifier if you don't want to. Most wedding and event photographers don't use them anymore.

[deasty1]

Wish I had seen this thread 2 months ago, BEFORE I bought the GF Lightsphere.
Comments.......Yes it does work well
Yes it is a REALLY expensive piece of plastic
It's also bloody cumbersome in a camera bag.
I'm going to go to IKEA and have a go at the home made one, just for the sake of it.
If it works just as well, I may ebay the GF

[feral1]

I have to be 2nd shooter at a wedding on Saturday. Decided I needed a softer flash.
I had a look at the Gary Fong Lightsphere but a)I could not get one in time b) they are an expensive piece of plastic.

Hmmmm... Googled and found the following DIY version...
DIY Gary Fong Lightsphere- instructions

Then I checked the local IKEA...
RATIONELL drawer mat - transparent

A few dollars later I have one!

I took a few test shots of Nel (who won't let me publish them, no makeup and in her jammies ) - and it works a treat!

So I also still have a good length of the drawer mat left over, any SA locals that are interested can have a strip

I might just take you up on that Kym, I am looking at some photos of the Grand kids and bouncing is not always the solution I have noticed.

Peter

[N*A*M]

i bought some of the ikea drawer mat if any melbourne locals want some for free. there's plenty in a roll.

[Kym]

Bump - as the Fong has come up in discussion (again)

[Topgunn]

Thanks for bumping this Kym

[hongbongkid]

Thanks for the views and insights guys! I've played around with bouncing and creating my own diffusers too, but never really thought about bouncing off other items, i.e. poles etc. I shall never throw away bubble wrap again! Love Rog's idea of the GF!!! lol

[jheeno]

Hello All,
First time poster, long time reader.

I am an amateur that recently purchased a speedlite and wanted to practice bounce flashing.

My main purpose is to bounce flash indoors typically in a poor lit room (ie inside a restaurant and the lights will generally be dim).

Secondly I with the photos I took, I wanted to take shots that are zoomed out so I can freely crop later on during post processing.

At first I just wanted to buy a sto fen omni bounce and a gary fond light sphere and be done with it.

When I googled gary fong light sphere I cam across this thread.

Since I wanted to further practice on my bounce flashing, I decided to take on the challenge of this DIY.

In total it has cost me $20 and I can probably make another 10 more with that $20 so allot of extra materials.

Velco is from any $2 shop and the other materials were purchased from Bunnings.

Here is what the mess currently looks like after making my first prototype





and my first test piece

[jheeno]

First photo I took was what the room appeared to look like through my eyes so lighting from the window was okay.

second shot is a direct shot, third shot was bounced on the ceiling and the fourth was bounced through the right.
1.


2.


3.


4.



Now the next set will be with my DIY light sphere

[jheeno]

Now with the DIY attachment on the flash
Pic 1-3 are bounced to the ceiling but the head rotated at several positions. Not much difference.
Pic 4 is a direct flash shot using ettl2 and estimating distance too.

1.


2.


3.


4.

[jheeno]

ok so I made a variant and the next test shots are more tighter now

[jheeno]

First column direct, second column bounced from the ceiling

First row no diffuser

Second row the diffused from the DIY above

Third row is the cylindrical shaped diffuser

Thanks everyone for looking.

Generally ill be using one of the diffusers i've made but I'll keep doing test shots to make me decide on which i'll use and put in my camera bag

[jheeno]

bear with me as I edit my test photos as it might take 10-20 minutes for my subsequent posts.

Heres what it looks like on my camera at ETTL 2 settings and also at full power

Camera is a canon 7d, Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens and a using a speedlite 430exii.
All shots used the following settings f4, iso 100.
Flash shots using shutter speed 1/160 in manual mode evaluative metering, f4, iso 100.
non flash shots using aperture priority, shutter watever the camera recommended, f4, iso 100.

[pollen]

In the situation shown by test shots, based on your results, there is no perceptible benefit whatsoever from using the diffuser device - why persist with it?