Event Lighting - Bouncing Speedlights

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Dan
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Ok so I wonder if I've found the holy grail of bounce flash tips..

If you haven't got a good nearby surface/wall/ceiling - bounce off yourself..

I've quickly tested it myself, and in practice - with the camera landscape I'm shooting the flash into my face, and in portrait it's hitting perhaps my shoulder. Suppose I could have angled it better to fix this :)

However in my test it yielded much better results than bouncing it off the green walls/ceiling in my dining room, lifting the shadows on one side of the face.

I have yet to try it in different environments at different times of day, but every time I've looked into this the solution has been carry cumbersome modifiers or reflector, or useless tiny ones..

Has anyone more experience with this, do they find it a good alternative when they lack a preferable surface? Or maybe a small hand-held reflector is still preferable
 
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If you think that is the best portable solution for event photography, then I'll look to buy one. I'll check some reviews.



Yes I suppose angle of light is an issue, I didn't analyse it that well.

I'm not sure it's the best and so on, but does pretty much what you need by the sounds of things.
 
Flash Bender would be better than your face, though my favourite accessories for this kind of thing are Lumiquest, particularly the QuikBounce.
 
As above, my preference is a quikbounce and a flashbender. Both very portable and both give decent light compared to others I’ve tried. Though my other habit currently is a remote hand held flash pointed direct.
 
Flash bender is a great piece of kit and for run and gun event photography where you can’t set up off cam flash it really doesn’t get better than an accessory like this.

I have also tried some similar home made accessories which also work well so I have no doubt other products like the quick bounce mentioned above (which I have no experience of) would also work well.
 
I've used my hand in the past (slightly cupping the palm), when there is no alternative.
Worked well and afforded a natural colour bias.
Tip was from 'Speedlighters Handbook' by Syl Arena - a good read.
 
An old press photographer's trick is to carry a clean white handkerchief and tie it over the head. I tried it years ago and it worked OK.
 
I once cut 3 inches off of the bottom of a small plastic milk container then slipped that over the flash, it was a perfect fit.
 
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