Today, as usual, I was hunting around on the internet on ways for improving my photography and came across the whole concept of flash diffusers. I was quite happy with bouncing my flash off the ceiling and walls but I thought that I’d probably take a look anyway. I had already read before that hard light i.e direct light from the flash is quite undesirable unless you want that effect.The all time classic solution to this problem is to diffuse the light. And the rule is that ‘the bigger the light source, the softer the light’ which means that we have to use a large diffuser as the size of the flash head is fixed.

Indoors, this is quite simple, as with a swivel-and-tilt flash, you can easily bounce the flash off the ceiling and walls, and effectively making them the source of light. As they are quite large, the usually give a nice and soft light. Then what’s the problem you may ask, and this was my doubt too. The bounce method may not work when working in places with high ceilings like churches, and outdoors too. And also having some diffused flash directly onto the subject enhances the photograph.

The method by which many photographers continue to swear by is to use a simple bounce card, which is basically a 3×5 index card strapped onto the head of the flash, while having the flash pointing upwards. The card will reflect some amount of light directly onto the subject which supposedly enhances the photograph.

There have been several newer alternatives to the bounce card like the Sto-fen Bounce, Flip-It, the Lightsphere, several products by Lumiquest and so on. You could find about a hundred different types of flash diffusers with a quick Google search but I’ve only listed the well known ones here.

All these various diffusers have the common objective of softening the light from a flash. Personally, I have never used these but after a lot of looking around, I found many posts and discussions relating to the same topic. There were several arguments about the most effective diffuser and many never reached a conclusion. I didn’t know whether I even needed a flash diffused so I thought that I might make myself one just to try it out.

I came across ABetterBounceCard.com which has detailed videos on how to make your own better bounce card, which is an enhanced version of the classic bounce card. The instructions are well described and easy to follow. After watching the video, I decided to get some foam sheet since he recommended using it. He also said that you could use a sheet of photo paper but I, being the perfectionist I am, decided to buy some foam paper.

We went to several stores and spent about 2 - 3 hours before finally coming across a craft store which had the foam sheets. I bought 3, just in case I messed up the first one. It didn’t take long to make the better bounce cards, just simple measuring and cutting. I also made a couple of modifications so that it would fit the flash head better.

However, my first impression of the better bounce card wasn’t too good but maybe I just don’t know how to us it properly. After a few attempts to use it, I realized that it isn’t too useful for me and ditched it. I found that having flash directly onto the subject didnt produce a desirable effect. But I only had the chance to try it out on bags, so I’ll give it a go tomorrow with some portraits and see how it works out.

I had a bonus though, since the foam sheets which I bought were great as backgrounds and I used it for today’s photo of the day. I plan on going and getting some additional colors tomorrow.

And in unrelated news, I have started listening to several songs by ‘The Kinks‘ and a song by Peter Sarstedt called ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ after watching ‘The Darjeeling Limited‘ as they both were featured prominently in the film.

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I went to the local Odeon yesterday with a couple of friends and watched my first movie in a theatre in England, ‘The Darjeeling Limited‘. As the title suggests, a majority of the movie takes place in India, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to watch it. It stars Owen Wilson, Adrian Brody, the writer guy from King Kong and Jason Schwartzman, whose face looked very familiar. We went to the theatre expecting a hilarious comedy but it turned to be a drama comedy, with more emphasis on the drama side and having subtle jokes here and there. Personally, I liked the movie since I got to see India but I doubt my friends felt the same.

The story is about three brothers who go to India to have a ’spiritual experience’ but they have a totally different experience, in a plot filled with weird and amusing twists and somewhat achieve what they wanted to. I loved the soundtrack of the movie, it had songs of varying genres but all of them were blended together perfectly.

But should you watch the movie? I dont know many people who would like the movie but if you like subtle humour mixed with drama and a sense of seriousness, and most importantly, if you like India, you’ll enjoy this movie. But this movie will definitely not appeal to the average everyday moviegoer.

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We had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday, thanks to Ashley and a day early because many people had several other commitments today. And I enjoyed the dinner so much that I completely forgot about my Quantitative Economics test today. Although superficially, it only seems like basic statistics, there’s a lot more to it.

The test went on reasonably good considering that I only studied for 3 hours before it. But I cant relax too much since I have another Economics Assignment to hand in by Monday.

And on the occasion of Thanksgiving, I would like say that I’m thankful to god for giving me the perfect life, with nothing to worry about, my family for always supporting every decision I make and being there for me, my friends from school, with whom I spent some of the best years of my life, my friends at University, without whom life would be empty, and every single person who has been part of my life because without them, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I’m also thankful to Nintendo, Sony, Canon, and U2 for obvious reasons.

And I would like to end this post with LG’s slogan - Life’s good.

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I watched two excellent movies over the last week. The first one was ‘The Shawshank Redemption‘ which has to be one of the best movies I’ve ever watched. There was never a moment of lull in the movie and had a great storyline. Every single minute of the movie was worth watching and it’s been quite awhile since I’ve watched such an epic movie.

The second one was the Oscar winning movie ‘Crash‘ which was also a mind-blowing movie. The plot twists and turns wildly but does not confuse the viewer. The photography of the movie is near perfect and emotions depicted were very natural and I must appreciate all the actors of the movie. It definitely deserved the Oscar.

With the help of a friend, I managed to make a reflector for my flash, which was basically a sheet of aluminium foil on cardboard. It worked quite well, but I’m yet to test it completely.

I went gliding today, and the first thing I noticed on the airfield that it was very very cold. And the constant wind only made matters worse. The sky was quite gloomy too, and it looked like the conditions couldn’t get any worse. However, this did not deter us and we went ahead with gliding. Today was quite a large leap for me from last week, and I was given complete control of the glider right after take-off and I even landed twice, with a little assistance. It was a great feeling, having complete control over the glider and the freedom to go wherever I wanted to. As a bonus, we got to see an Apache doing some routine checks. We finished our session a little early today, due to the unfavourable weather and had an equally good time playing on classic arcade pinball.

Today is also the birthday of our flatmate, Sam, and I wish him a Happy Birthday!

Update - I have done some updates to the site, the most noticeable being the new widgets on the right side. The first allows you to be updated with the latest photograph of my 365 Day Project and the second displays famous quotes. The other changes are internal bug fixes, etc. Feedback invited.

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Alright, I have to admit there’s nothing related to elephants in this post. Getting to the more serious matters at hand, I’ve finished about half of my 3000 word essay today, fuelled by McVities Chocolate Digestives and a nonstop supply of Prabhu Deva songs from YouTube which when combined together, worked better than coffee and Red Bull. I spent almost the whole day writing the essay, and gained a lot of knowledge in the process of finishing the essay. Life has been pretty good overall, other than the fact that my laptop seems to be getting slower day by day and almost starts crying when I run Photoshop.

Click the image for higher resolution and description.

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The Canon 430EX arrived today, and I must say that it is a quite powerful  piece of equipment. I also ordered a set of wireless flash triggers, one of those cheap ones from Ebay. The triggers were activating the flash at random but after placing a piece of aluminium in the right place, everything was alright.

The flash itself is quite big and heavy, with 4 AA batteries. It just fits into my camera bag, and I don’t think I can stuff anything more into that bag. The 430EX definitely gives a professional and impressive look along with the 40D and I felt that it would be quite bulky to carry around. But once I started using the flash, I realized that its worth carrying around that extra weight for its impressive results. You can see all of my photography gear in today’s photograph for the 365 Day Project here.

The wireless flash triggers don’t have the greatest of range and I haven’t fully tested them but they’re good enough for my purpose. I’m sure I’ll be able to try out some new lighting techniques with them. My flash and wireless trigger look exactly like this.

I’ve haven’t taken too many photographs using the flash to its full capacity yet but I will be spending lots of time experimenting with it, trying to achieve new and unusual lighting methods.
And I also wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous Diwali!

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