I have a nice little diffuser for my hot shoe flash, but would like to figure out a solution for those times when it's just me and the built in flash.

I know, "who uses the built in flash, blah blah gearhead blah"

work with me here...

I know I've seen something by some third party maker before, but couldn't find a link. Woudl love some little item (even/especially if homemade possibility) that I could just slap over it and would be effective.

Ideas?

Use a translucent film canister...







Voila!

Pat

[bigben91682]

These are all great ideas, and I myself use the film canister trick, which I learned on these forums at one point or another...

But if the OP just wants to buy something, Gary Fong - master marketier of overpriced tupperware - makes the fong puffer which is designed for the pop-up.

[Confused]

Hi spyglass

Re your recommendation:

I am going to pick a few ping pong balls up today and try it.

...but please pay heed everybody, and always remember that it's potentially a very risky practice to go around "flashing" your balls in public. Therefore always try and do it in the privacy of your home whenever possible, otherwise you may run in to big trouble with the "long arm of the law"....LOL !

Best regards
Richard

[Jodokast96]

I have used a kleenex and rubber band, the translucent film canister is clever, but the ping pong ball idea is simply brilliant. I am going to pick a few ping pong balls up today and try it.


Thanks for that one !!!!!!!!!

Can't take credit for that one. But it was a fellow Pentaxian that I remember first hearing it from.

[Russell-Evans]

The Luxcon Universal Pop-up Flash Diffuser is a little bulky but at US $4.90 and free shipping, why not.

I've bought three items from the vendor, paid via paypal, and the only issue I had was because I'm impatient. The shipping is a quoted at 20 days and I think it averaged about 15 days for me.

Thank you
Russell

[Eigengrau]

That Luxcon looks exactly like the Gary Fong "Puffer" which I paid $20 for - I feel like a chump.

It works ok, though. And I didn't have to wait forever on shipping.

[Mattp9]

The DealExtreme item is a knock-off of the Gary Fong Puffer. Not a good idea to give profit to copyright rip-offs. Think what you'd feel like if you saw one of your photos used for profit and had nothing for it?

I have the Gary Fong puffer and it allows me to use my Sigma 10-20mm at 10mm and still get light from the pop-up throughout the frame, instead of cut off by the lens. Nice piece of kit to have.

[jmbower]

great suggestions everyone, thank you.

I actually fiddled about with a couple things yesterday, after looking at the lumiquest thing.

I took an old plastic bound report, and removed the frotn cover (a piece of semi-transparent thing plastic with "frosted" texture.

I cut it into a rectangle with hotshoe sized tabs at either end, and covered the back half with tinfoil, and the front half with a sheet of thin tissue paper. I put a piece or tow of tape around the back tab to make it thicker, then inserted it into the hotshoe. I folede the rectangle up and over the flash, and then stuck the other tab into the hotshoe from the front. The Foil side behind the flash, that papaer side in front.

It seems to work pretty well, I just need to figure out what to do about the sides...

I'm going to try some of the other ideas here as well

[sabarrett]

Scott- makes entirely good sense, I can picture it as I've used those things myself. Never did make the leap to cutting them to fit though - that's a great idea!

Here is a few shots. This was from a 3 pack of flexible cutting boards at Wally-world. Cost ~$3.00 and a little time to make it fit. It seems to help. One nice thing is when it is off the camera it lays flat.

[Spex]

Wow, this is great design!
I made one from Traxdata 24 CD holder, it has semi-transparent covers. But I should apply this design, because had some problem with fixing it in front of flash, this one is great!

[JJJPhoto]

I'm amazed no one in this thread mentioned the Kobre Lightscoop:

light scoop digital photography lighting built-in flash Olympus Nikon Fuji Canon Pentax

While not technically a "diffuser" the Lightscoop transforms the pop-up flash into a quality bounce flash. Just set your flash to +1 and go!

It works best with bright/fast lenses (f/2.8 or faster) and ISO 400 or more, but I love this little gizmo.

I was really skeptical the first time I tried it, but now I use it whenever I'm at an indoor party and don't want to haul around a big external flash.

[Nesster]

Scott, BRILLIANT! Your design addresses the biggest pain with the Lumiquest - it has a flimsy tab that is supposed to hook onto the front of the prism housing, only it doesn't stay on. Yours hooks securely behind the flash struts themselves.

That light scoop is an intriguing idea... bounce it off a mirror. Yeah, looks like it would work

[Mike.P®]

Little plastic cover that sits on the K10D battery cover.
Play with the tabs on the side until you get it right and from then on it just clicks on.

[pjsnell]

Anyone want to post pics using the pingpong ball or fuji canister?

[mr. jef]

a couple of cigarette rolling papers have helped me many a time, thanks to the glue they're easy to attach, but because the glue's not too respectable, they're easy to remove as well. Also, it's about 1 euro for 100 diffusers

[photogiedra]

Little plastic cover that sits on the K10D battery cover.
Play with the tabs on the side until you get it right and from then on it just clicks on.

Mike, since your suggested diffuser is basically the same size as the flash, it would not help much, you would still get harsh shadows but would also loose flash power. It's mostly about the size of the light source which gives you nice and soft shadows.

Giedrius