Softbox vs Flashbender

mharvey84

mharvey84

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Name
Martyn
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Hi All,

Apologies if in the wrong section but I'm curious on thoughts about using a Softbox vs Flashbender with a Speedlite sitting on camera? As to the scenario it's for taking shots of people indoors in a convention centre which has high ceilings and very little to bounce off, that coupled with poor light caused me to use much higher ISO then I'd like on a f2.8 lens when attempting last year.

Interested in what people recommend? Also what scenario's may better suit each item.

Afraid I haven't yet tried with either item as it's a new area for me :)

Thanks in advance.
 
Thanks for the info, I was a little worried about how they'd fair moving round a busy convention :) Do you find the direct flash is a bit harsh though? Or it's more having to make the best of a bad lighting situation?
 
You could try a little OCF bracket to get the flash off the top and give some shadow. Still keeps it portable.

J
 
I quite liked the flash bender with the flash on camera. Relatively cheap, worth a punt!!
 
Anything that softens the flash a little, is preferable to harsh on camera flash imo, so yeah i would recommend trying a flash bender.
 
I can really recommend the flashbender, fantastic piece of kit for the money. The last time I used mine was a charity shoot at a donkey sanctuary, in a large shed so no danger of being able to bounce the flash, and particularly as I was shooting children I didn't want the rabbit in the headlights look. Flashbender really softened the light and combined with the high ISO of the 5D3 (it was so dark I was shooting at ISO 8000-12800) I was able to balance the (lack of) ambient light and the flash for some really nice exposures.
 
I have both the lastolite ezybox sleedlite and the large flash bender, the flash bender is a lot more flexable, fits in the camera bag easy and is cheaper. The ezybox works just as well when it comes to softening the light and makeiing the souce larger but it is still a smalish source. But the bigger issues with it are it is a lot bigger when packed away so a pain to carry about takes longer to set up on the flash gun and it pretty much does one thing where the flashbender can be a snoot, flag and bounce the light about in a few different ways.
 
Love my flashbender.:):plus1:
 
Thanks again for the replies all :) I've got a flashbender at the moment so given how busy the convention centre was last time it'll probably fair better then an ezybox, looking forward to giving it a go :)
 
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