The flash diffusers such as the Stofen omni-bounce, Gary Fong Lightsphere and the like, are great little gadgets that can help create soft light in a small room, or a room with a low ceiling.

The fact is, these plastic devices that you attach to the end of your flash are not softening the light coming out of your flash.

Light itself is neither hard or soft. It’s photons flying through the air in a straight line. The only way to create softer shadows is to make the apparent size of the light source in relation to your subject larger. This can be done, for example with soft boxes and umbrellas placed near your subject. Another method, if you are indoors, is by bouncing the light up into the ceiling or into a wall, which will bounce back much larger light source than the small size of your on-camera flash.

You can also use these plastic flash diffusers to aid in softening the light indoors. What these attachments do, is send the light spraying out in all directions, which in turn, bounce off everything, causing light to fall upon your subject from many directions to produce the look of softer light.

Now, are you heading outside to shoot with on-camera flash? The first thing you should do is take your plastic diffuser off (if it’s attached), and shove it in your pocket, camera bag, or wherever else you feel like shoving it.

Contrary to popular belief, a piece of translucent plastic that scatters light in all directions without nearby surfaces to reflect the scattered light back into the scene, will not soften the light. A diffuser outdoors — a large majority of the time — simply wastes light, reduces range, slows recycle times and eats batteries.

The light that will hit your subject will be the light that starts at your flash and heads straight at your subject. All the other light spreading out in all other directions will not have anything to bounce back from and will just go to waste. If you think that bouncing off the clouds is worth a try, fahgettaboutit, that’s a lesson in futility.

Outdoors, use your on-camera flash as fill, and shoot direct. Your mileage may vary, but by setting your flash to ETTL mode with a FEC of -1 1/3 to -2, should yield some very nice results.

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