| A bounce card is probably one
accessory that is not used very often for flash photography. Even if it does, the
prices of such add-on flash accessories can be ridiculously high, as many amateurs
have told me they needed to think twice before making the purchase. The home-made bounce card shown in the previous page was actually a cutout from an outdated EOS camera stand (to promote the discontinued EOS 1000-series). It has two colors on each side, white and gray. Most of the time, the white side is used, with the gray surface only utilized for certain effects. Velcro strips are placed on the Speedlite unit as well as on the bounced card. By placing a Velcro strip on the side of the 540EZ or 550EX, the home-made bounce card can also be used for vertical shooting. Look at these photos below. The first was shot in direct fill-in flash via Program E-TTL mode with the 550EX on a Type A EOS camera. Appearance-wise, the fill-in E-TTL flash is less harsh than most conventional flash metering but the shadow caused by the picture frame is less appealing. The second was shot in bounced flash, also E-TTL via P mode. The effect is better as the shadow has disappeared.
As you can see, there is very little difference (at a glance) between the second and third photos, which were shot via the built-in bounced card. The only difference is that the tone is lighter in the shadow area, between the bears' legs and bottom part of the picture frame as compared to the second shot. In the fourth photo, shot via the home-made bounce card, the shadows that appeared in the first have reappeared again, albeit with a much lighter tone. It also created another shadow from the upper part of the picture frame, which was due to the flash light that was still partly directed towards the subject rather than bounced effect when used with the home-made card. The larger size of the home-made card enabled the shadows to appear in the photo because more light was distributed towards the subject than it was with the built-in bounce card of the Speedlite. If there is one weakness of the built-in bounce card, it is from its inability to obtain bounced flash in the vertical format position. No problem with the home-made bounced card since the Velcro strip on the side of the Speedlite's head has enabled it to be used for vertical shooting, as shown by the photos below. The use of the bounced card in vertical angle enabled daylight-balanced appearance as the conventional method had the photo mixed with the color of the ceiling, which has a slight warm cast.
<< Back to Main . 1 . 2 . 3 . |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
