On-board flash experiementing, 3 pics

I hope you guys and gals don't mind me occasionally posting photos here =)
Yes, I went Canon, but frankly this is the greatest community I've seen on the web so far . I'm a Pentaxian at heart, though I'm a Canoneer by label.

Inspired by this site: (great info/tutorial! even if you don't buy anything)

ABetterBounceCard.com

I decided to test out a piece of white paper in front of my onboard flash today while taking pictures of my son. I was in my living room, which isn't too large - I wanted to see if "blocking" the flash and bouncing off my white walls / ceiling would produce enough diffused light to be usable.

First, we have a shot of him using the onboard flash, direct facing. He was paying attention to his sister at this point.



Now I have his attention after that flash. I use a simple piece of paper (square) basically rubber-banned in front of the flash. Nothing special at all.



I think it's an improvement! Ignoring the slight color temp variation (I didn't edit the bare flash pic too much, just a quicky temp change), I think the shadows are much less harsh!


Here is another one



Still you have the shadow, but not too bad.

I think I can experiment more to try to get a flash going forward and bouncing. I have the shadows now because basically the flash is firing straight back, bouncing off rear wall (for most part) and then bouncing forward again, which is why you have shadows.

Comments welcome! This was a fun little experiment.

[maxwell1295]

If I get a chance, I'll post a pc of my "home grown" diffuser tonight. It does a fantastic job of softening and spreading out the lighting from the flash. It's very similar to this one, but much simpler in design.

DIY Reflector-Diffuser

For about $2, you can build one of these in less than 5 mins. I ended up building a few of these using different materials for about $3-4ea. Here are some samples taken with the DIY diffuser and shoe mounted flash:








BTW, I just love those drool shots.