Hi All,

I know it is a bit of a controversial topic, but I was wondering what most people would use for shooting outdoors at dusk/night time to improve the lighting quality from their flash? I am doing some shooting as an amateur for an upcoming event which runs from 5pm-9pm and was planning on pairing my 70-200f/4l with my 580ex-ii.

I have not done much outdoor flash photography; I have mainly been practicing indoors. For indoors I have been using a sto-fen with a custom made better-bounce-card and generally shooting at a 45deg angle or so to get the balance of bounce-to-direct flash. It works ok indoors, but I am not so sure it will work outdoors.

At a wedding on the weekend I noticed the professionals using two different methods - one shot straight on with their 580ex-ii and simply used the inbuilt bounce card and the wide angle diffuser whilst the other shot straight on with an e-bay translucent diffuser a bit like a standard 1 stop diffuser to create shade when in direct sunlight. The convenience of these methods was pretty appealing.

I really want to be able to shoot in E-TTL with my flash mounted straight on my camera; an I understand that I will be dragging the shutter for ambient but just wanted some thoughts on what to put on the flash head (if anything) to soften the light.

Thanks for any advice.

Cadnium