My DIY brolly bracket was designed and made in about an hour late Sunday evening. The first outing with this monstrous gadget was Monday at the second evening of Yeovil camera club's Summer Programme. I'm encouraged by these super results, especially the lack of sharp shadows. Also as the flash is now so far above and to one side of the lens the modelling of subject's features have more character and the lighting appears so natural that it's not obvious whether there is any flash fill-in or not. All in all a great success!All three of these photos were taken with a shutter speed of 1/200th at f7 with an ISO setting 200.
As the flash was firing through the small translucent white brolly it was turned up from its normal 1/16th power to 1/4 power.
Why I use a flashgun set so low? By using a lower power I can achieve a recycling time of just one second and it's possible to shoot off about six photos before I need to briefly pause while the flash capacitor fully recharges.Note the soft shadows in the picture of Liz and Perta.
Ian's jumper and especially his nearest hand is not burnt out.
Cyril, our oldest member at eighty four, was the only one sitting in direct sunlight and turned out to be the most difficult to get the exposure right. I like this shot as he appears not to have been obviously fill flashed. His picture gives the impression of having the shadows lit via a large reflector.
The strange phenomenon of using this tiny translucent brolly is that
the light appears equal in front, behind and off to both sides. This means there would be a fair amount hitting a low ceiling and bouncing back into the picture, great for groups. This makes my brolly bracket even more versatile than I first thought.More experiments and results with the brolly bracket will be posted up soon. Keith Robins - strobist.
