Day 247 - Getting to Know Gary Fong

.. not really the photographer/inventor, but the invention he calls the Lightsphere Universal.  You might remember that I had mentioned it in a recent post and I had barely been able to try it for want of a model.  Today, I managed to coax my son to sit for me for just ten minutes, and after a little bit of haggling and hassling, he agreed!  My lucky day!  Actually, he's agreed to sit for me now and then, but only for ten minutes each time.  I can't complain - he's a teenager after all, and has had a mind of his own since he was less than 6 months old!

Anyway, I started with the translucent photojournalist (that's what the diffuser is called).  When I had ordered this product I had noted that it came with a tutorial DVD, but when I rummaged through the box yesterday, I hadn't found it.  Upon mailing Midwest, they sincerely apologized and let me know that Gary Fong had pulled it out of the kit!  Darn!  However, when you have Youtube, there's not much cause for worry.  So I spent a few minutes watching videos on how to use it.

I did this really late in the evening, after dinner, so I didn't really spend a lot of time taking notes on the flash settings and the position of the dome, so I'm unable to post them today.  I was experimenting with the light by stopping down the power level of the flash, changing the zoom level, or changing the angle of the flash.  I will have to do a thorough study of the settings again soon to familiarize myself with the flash and diffuser duo.

Here are the results from this evening:

I tried flashing the background with a blue-gelled flash, but I obviously wasn't able to use that correctly.  While the first shot has a more or less even background, the last one is the least attractive.  I'll definitely have to work on that.