Flash with "index card" trick

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I could not find any details about what is meant with the subject's trick for taking pictures with a flash. Who can shed some light on this for me?--Torsten Villnow
 
I could not find any details about what is meant with the subject's
trick for taking pictures with a flash. Who can shed some light on
this for me?
Placing it in front of the built-in flash (or a fixed hot-shoe flash {non-bouncing}) at a 45 degree angle to bounce the light upward, I believe. Nevermind me, I'm just passing through again posting and reading; happened to hear about that before too.--Farewell, Bob H.
 
Another possibility:

Angle the flash head straight up and fasten a piece of card that will project out into the “stream” of flash at a 45-degree angle. Fasten like we did years ago with rubber bands, or use Velcro. You generally would want the card to be at least 4x6 inches or larger for adequate coverage. This produces nicely diffused lighting for the subject and allows you to bounce without a ceiling. Another alternative is to use the same card size with the flash set at 45-degrees (to bounce off the ceiling or adjacent surface) and angle the card slightly into the light (say 10-15 degrees) to fill in some of the shadows produced from the bounce surface. This will add snap to the highlights (I used this technique on the attached photo), give it a little more contrast.

I have seen some folks use lens tissue or velum over the flash tube, shooting normally, to diffuse the light, also. Plus there are many products available on the market to do the same, but I’m not sure how they’d work on camera.
best of luck, thanks for reading


I could not find any details about what is meant with the subject's
trick for taking pictures with a flash. Who can shed some light on
this for me?
--
Torsten Villnow
 
This is the way I use the index card (although just holding it with a rubber band right now): http://twalker.d2g.com/pro90/flashtest/bouncecard.htm . The card doesn't have be be bent in towards the flash head to work properly since the 420ex autozooms to 50mm when in bounce mode.

See Todd's site here: http://twalker.d2g.com/pro90/flashtest/bouncecard.htm for samples with the 420ex in different positions and with/without the index card. It's a great trick and improves the photos quite a bit, but lately I've been using a 30" Lastolite reflector with even more pleasing results and much more control. See my post here for info on the reflector: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1010&message=2545356

Michael

I could not find any details about what is meant with the subject's
trick for taking pictures with a flash. Who can shed some light on
this for me?
--
Torsten Villnow
 

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