anyone seen, or used a flash diffuser like this

sevencrossing

https://www.flickr.com/photos/howiemuzika/3763309285/in/set-72157621867516976

Vipmediastar_JZ

I was going to say I saw something like that years ago. Then I saw the age of the photo and it makes sense. Funny and oversided.

ThomasHorton

Kinda clever. Hope he stays inside where there is no wind.

FlowtographyBerlin

That's a simple translucent umbrella as used in the studio (well, if you use it, that is). The effect roughly resembles that of a softbox of similar size, although in a closed room, you have lots of light spill, which is not a problem outside. It's very cheap, too.

This guy is using it attached to his rucksack, and a strobe behind it. For this you'll need the part that he attaches to his rucksack (like part of a light stand or boom), an umbrella holder to attach to the top (a small, inexpensive part), you can get umbrella holders that already have a part that you can attach the hotshoe flash to. He's using a PocketWizard Multi Max (no TTL) for triggering, but there's a couple of other possiblities for TTL wireless triggering nowadays, as you all know.

manhattanboy

https://www.flickr.com/photos/howiemuzika/3763309285/in/set-72157621867516976

I like the quotes for the photo.
"Best superhero at comicon"
Lol.

StrobistBackpack

Hey everyone. That's my old Mark II strobist backpack, and I've updated it quite a bit since then. The latest version uses a Cabela's backpack frame with a light weight stand zip tied to it. I'm using PocketWizard's MiniTT1 and Plus II's with a LumoPro LP 160 strobe. It's a totally manual setup, so adapting to a new environment takes a minute, but I've shot enough with it to know a good starting point. And yes, high winds and low hanging signage were obstacles I learned to avoid over time. The goal was to bring soft off camera lighting to a packed convention floor, and I'm really happy with the results over time.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/howiemuzika/14601641248/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/howiemuzika/collections/72157646006050205/

Cheers.

Msmoto

About five years ago I had a 24" white umbrella mounted in a similar fashion with an SB-800 bounced into it. One gets a glamour light effect when used with enough power to overwhelm ambient light, or,I had it set at lower power so as to provide a very nice soft fill. Probably the best "portable" fill light I have used. There is a bit of bulk, of course, and in a wind outdoors…. not so great….

ThomasHorton

Hey everyone. That's my old Mark II strobist backpack, and I've updated it quite a bit since then.

Welcome to the forum. Can you post some of the pictures you took with this unusual lighting set up?

FlowtographyBerlin

Can you post some of the pictures you took with this unusual lighting set up?

That's not an unusual lighting setup, it's pretty much the go-to standard setup for portraits, one light source above camera, on-axis. The unusual (and clever) part is that you'd 'wear' it as a rucksack. Some of the images in the linked flickr stream are clearly from that setup, although in all of them, you have lots of ambient fill light, i.e. not the same effect as when this setup is used as the only light source. (Which was not the intention, I guess.)

If you want to recreate the light at home and don't have studio flashes available, it's easy: Make sure there's a white wall behind you, point your hotshoe-flash there (i.e., behind you, and above you) and focus it to something like 50mm, depending on the distance. You should get a light spot of something like 2 ft/60cm diameter. Now put your subject in front of you at something like 1,5 m. Done.

Set camera to manual mode and choose a setting where you will get a dark image without the flash, i.e. 1/160, f/5.6, ISO 100. Now the camera (TTL) will compensate for all the missing light with the flash light, leaving you with the flash as the only light source.

You can vary the height of the light spot on the wall (tilt the flash up and down) to compare the effects the light position has on your model. Enjoy!