Gary Fond Lightsphere outdoors at night?

You want "slow rear sync" a lightsphere is useless in this situation.

Using aFong type diffuser is rather pointless outdoors: it needs things like ceilignas and walls

to work well. Short of lightingthe background , as suggested you'll need to use your camera

and flashes "rear sync" sync mode.

Has anybody used the lightsphere for outdoor shots in the evening. I have a

shoot coming up which will take place an night and I want to avoid having that

very brightly lit subject from a flash while everything else in the back still

goes dark. Being that the shoot is in NYC it's important to be able to see all

the "citylife" in the background while still maintaining correct exposure on the

subject and not being too bright or look like a flash. What I'm, trying to

acheive is have the flash look like it's natural light or coming from something

in the image suck as a streetlamp.

i use the fong outside at night all the time. works great.

yes all the above is good but if you want a defused light to match I find the vivitar 285 or 283 with a vivitar bounce card type diffuser works very well out side if your subject is close as they don?t use up to much light and your light souce is almost A4 in size Metz do one to for the 45 and 60 range ,if long way off Evan a umbrella or soft box will be a tiny light so might as well use strait flash (or 2) also if you have a DSLR manual set white balance so look ok on screen then put a worming gel or filter over the flash gun and it blend in better + tripod may be needed for low shutter speed to bring the back ground up fast lens helps as well hope this helps Dave

no offense to you "its useless" folks, but you are in fact incorrect. I'm going to guess you've never actually used one outdoors at night? Of course there is no BOUNCE from it, but it's not the only thing it does.

 

in CONJUNCTION with rear curtain sync and slow shutter speeds, the LS (I use the hard plastic one with the dome on and pointed up) does cut down on the glare (shiny faces, bald heads) as well as getting the light up and away from the lens some (when not using a bracket). I find my flash exposures are more consistent at night using it as well (canon dlsrs, 580ex flashes). it is of course a limited use tool, with a very limited distance range, but I do find it very functional while shooting outdoor weddings (fwiw, I only shoot outdoor weddings).

 

but this is PN so I recognize that practical, first hand experience will always take a back seat to speculation and opinion, especially when it's delivered by people with special icons next to their names so..... feel free to disregard.

 

cheers

is it necessary to use a tripod while shooting with rear curtain sync or does it not making a difference.

Hi its not the rear synk but the slow shutter speeds you may be using. rear curtain sync (correct me if i wrong ) is only needed with moving supjects and slow shutter speeds , say photo of a car if flash triggers at beginnig of exsposher you will have a sharp car with the flash, then a blured car from the slow shutter moving in front, with rear curtain you get the blured image behind the sharp flash image i hope this is clear as its as clear as mud now i read it back to my self dave

Based on your description of what you want the image to look like, you'd need a tripod and use a slow shutter (not rear curtain sync) while the flash illuminates the subject. You'd set your exposure for the rendition of the skyline you wanted and let the flash expose the couple correctly. You may have to compensate your flash to just the right amount. I believe this is called slow sync in the Canon instruction book, and is done by using AV with flash. You can try it in AV first just to see what happens. You can compensate the ambient (skyline) and the flash separately, so just playing with those controls might get you what you want.

 

To make the light on the couple look like it is coming from a street light, get it off the camera if you can, and high. Having the light be harder isn't a problem if trying to simulate streetlight.

 

As for the Lightsphere, you can use it outside pointed up with the dome on and it will work for closer subjects, but you are "wasting" some of the light (but that's OK). Or you can use the LS, dome on, with the it pointed directly at the couple. The light will be softer than direct flash. It still wastes light to some degree--there is a 3 stop light loss. One thing to watch for in that case would be light fall off with wide angle lenses. There is a circular pattern created from the dome.

The advantage of using a flash with the tripod is you can freeze the subjects. They, the subjects still need to be somewhat still, but a 1 second exposure to pick up the background, using a flash will stop most the the subjects movement and yet still get some of the background. I don't agree that the LS is useless. Any defuser will help to soften the harsh flash output.

I use this thing outside at night as well. Works great.

I believe the technique is called 'dragging the shutter' or 'slow sync' as some have mentioned. As for the LS, I haven't used one. I HAVE used a Demb Flash Diffuser Pro - in fact it's very first outing was during an evening outdoors wedding I shot late last year. Worked beautifully in conjunction with slow shutter speeds. Fast glass helps too.

<p>A lot also depends on what exactly your shoot is about. If it's a nightclub scene, you might want to show some movement rather than freeze it. If it's a model shoot, that may be a diffreent story altogether...

<p>I shoot film, so I didn't have the luxury of checking the outcome instantly. If you have a dSLR, you have an advantage there. In any case, I'd suggest going out to the venue beforehand, bring along an assistant/model and take some test shots :)