•  It's really quite slick, nothing too complex and the main components are capacitors to store energy, an energy source like a battery pack and a flash tube. The energy from the battery charges the capacitor. This is the “recycle time” from dead to peak in milliseconds, seconds and minutes, which seems like hours when you have a prancing bride coming down the aisle like a Kurt Busch of NASCAR with a checkered flag in sight.

DEFINITIONS:
The Guide Number (GN) - The starting point is the Guide N or GN number of the Flash. Sort of a manual exposure data point published, provided by the manufacturer who tends to exaggerate and sometimes some lie a lot in their favor.

  •  Every flash model has its guide number, and even they may vary based on age, usage as the flash gets older. New flashes may be stronger. As the plastic degausses or shows age, just like the headlamps on your car turning frosty or yellow, the capacitor may weaken, this may pollute, dilute, and change the output.  The GN of a flash is usually given at ISO 100. If a different ISO is being used, you have to adjust it.

  •  EXAMPLE: Lets use a simple Vivitar 285HV which suggests a guide number of 120 for ISO 100 at ten feet.  Simple.   Divide 10 into 120 and you get F12. Digitals can do F12. In the old days we just used F11.  Any photographer who has used a Vivitar 285 HV found the flash underexposed, about one stop, and he adjusted the guide number down to compensate.  Most used 90 or so.  What does this mean in manual shooting? You got better more saturated shots with F9 or actually F8 than stopped down at F11. More light got to the subject and made it back to the film.  The correction, a photographer decision created more saturated brilliant pictures.  You are in command. 

  •  VARIATIONS - Read the manual, the manuals of many newer flashes have started to provide guide numbers for various focal lengths. This can help more accurately determine the aperture to be used.  The focal length can change the Guide Number. You can bet the manufacturer advertises at the best looking number for his product. It may not produce the effects you want at your focal length. 

HERE'S HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
  •  FIRE IN THE HOLE - In the beginning of flash the output was determined “by hand”. Lord help us if the assistant just happened to have "big hands". The amount of gunpowder “that fit in your hand”, when you loaded the powder holder.  I would imagine the first auto flash was a series of measuring cups to determine exposure.  A few probably went nuclear when photographing in a silver mine with methane gas.  After the light, the helper standing there, still smoldering said to the boss "hey boss, that was F-296 for sure.

  •  OLDER FIXED FLASHES - The camera triggers the flash and allows the flash to send out its maximum discharge that it is set for. Older flashes only had one setting referred to as a full dump or nuclear.  In this mode the camera and flash work as two independent pieces of equipment. Since the camera does not know how much power the flash will put out, this required the shooter to adjust the aperture, for exposure.

  •  FLASH METERS - A heavy flash user with multiple setups and no flash meter is a trekker without a compass. In studio work with fairly powerful studio lights, flash meters measure the flash output, this determines the camera aperture.  You simply measure the flash at the subject distance and compute the aperture to be used. I use and swear by the Sekonic 358, many pros do.

  •  THEN CAME SENSORS - In the second generation of flashes, a new innovation called a sensor is used for measuring flash output.  This sensor is activated when the flash is triggered. The light strikes the subject and bounces back.  At that point the sensor cuts the flash discharge and the exposure is complete.  "Thyristor and squelch circuits" became the new buzzwords.  Most of these simple sensor models operated in auto mode on the flash.  

Some flashes have sub modes determined by aperture and distance benchmarks and used colored identifiers on the flash to illustrate the sub-mode you were in. One writer called them "preset levels". On a Vivitar thats the purple yellow and blue modes.

  •  OFF CAMERA SENSOR - 
Some of these earlier flashes had a removable sensor by the use of an extension cable so one can move the flash to an off camera position.  The sensor works regardless of it’s relation to the head of the flash.  This can produce more flattering light with objects and portraits.

  •  THE BIRTH OF TTL - As the cameras became more sophisticated, it became apparent the camera could determine these settings and convey the signals to the flash when needed.  The camera can tell the flash what aperture and ISO sensitivity to be used or considered.  Most of the better units have complex signal devices if some parameters are exceeded. The sensor placed in the bowels of the camera now take the bounced signal off the “film plane” in the film camera and referred the same way in the digital camera. Thus the measurement is taken directly off the “contact area” or sensor area of the system.   When you press the shutter release, the following in sequence happens:

These gizmos are a life saver in some situations, no help in some and screw ups in others.  Every day on the web forums, I see a lot of testing of modifiers. 

  •  TESTING WHAT? - To me this means nothing. No modifier works all the time or to a standard because NO LIGHT or circumstance is the same each time. The conditions change, it is totally frickin irrelevant what one "contributor" tested when the next guys light is another set of rules under another set of conditions. 

  •  Any newbie can shoot a brown teddy bear in front of a yellow sofa and write a report. Brilliant he just discovered modified light. Lets deal in reality, no offense here.  Take the same guy and stick him at a $3000.00 Wedding with his cajones on the line, a Caucasian Bride, White Wedding dress, a Black Groom in a Black Tuxedo and the Bridesmaids are all in Yellow, Lavender and Pink, a typically morose dark Catholic Church, and the Priest just said "no flash".  

  •  Heart Attack. Thats reality folks because I see it all the time. Here’s where all the promises, tests, theories, conclusions, examples, adoration, endorsementation, fluctuation and flatulence, and plain old smoke blowing in some forums mean nothing. (Again, the REAL real world, nothing personal, just reality). Well,  something, I did see some nice teddy bear pictures.

  •  I applaud the testers for their efforts but unfortunately there’s no flat playing field to compare. We might have a smaller shadow, we might have more reflectivity, we have slight nuances in color temperature, all means little. If you print yourself the levels and hue bars correct things and if you send it off they'll correct anyway, if you use a good lab. 

  •  REAL WORLD

  •  If you get the blotches like we've seen with bad reflections coming from the FONG hand grenades hitting chandeliers, creating large blotch and reflection areas and you got a day’s work correcting them. 

  •  Most of these products work best under controlled conditions. Weddings are not controlled conditions. Tests without ambient mixed light, makeup, live models, movement (speed at some wedding prevents playing around) are all great in theory but it would take a million shots for it to mean anything. Nice pictures, not real world.

  •  Ceilings are not created equal, thus bounce differs with ceiling in distance and texture and reflectivity. Many bars and other after party places have dark ceilings, some painted, some by smoking. Theirs nothing like the nice warm tobacco look. I think it's an 85B filter if you like your subjects looking like jaundice.

  •  Walls used for bouncing come in different colors, thus you get different colors and fringing.

  • Distances used for testing do not reflect the falloff and flattening of light truly by a 12 foot ceiling. That means your light went 24 feet big falloff and very top heavy with shadows under the eyes.

  •  Long bouncing sometimes in the quest of shadow less photography gives us very flat photography.

  •  Useless in back lit situations unless you completely overpower the subject.

  •  What I'm saying is there is no one gadget, magic wand, silver bullet or genii in a bottle that replaces a photographer with situational awareness, common sense, talent and knowledge of lighting. Thinking the bullet will solve all the problems and not require the homework to be successful is foolish. Sooner or later that results in a botched wedding.

  •  So you can tell, I like the bounce card theory better than the hand grenade because it's obviously more controllable which makes it more predictable. Bounce cards have been around since the Vivitar 283 days when it was the weapon of choice and I remember the Vivitar had a diffuser available.  Then Sto-Fen came on the scene and the race was on. 

  •  It started when a forum member sent me her entire job she shot of a wedding that had colored rings in every picture. Imagine trying to rid a couple hundred shots in Photoshop of rings of light that happened to settle;  On every bride and groom shot randomly and variable in size.  She will have to mask every photo and do a density mask to the top layer. Impossible, thats not  going to work. This would be easy if each shot wasn’t in a different location. No two shots the same. No way to batch file that job. I did solve that problem. But if you want to know the answer call me...too long a process to explain here.

  •  Another Fred Miranda member in the Wedding forum reported the same problem. One was a Nikon flash and the other a Canon Flash, both using Fong’s light Sphere. Both were in a room that had glass chandeliers...bingo...

  •  WE TESTED - So my main concerns were what if the device that is supposed to improve shadows and light modification actually can do more harm.  So we started to test some of the "FONGALIZERS" and found several issues.

  •  NO MODELING - When you have that flat light all over, there is no depth, not what we called in school "modeling light", no dimension, and no spark.  To get spark it blows away highlights. Look at old B&W movies, they worked with shadows, we try to kill shadow, but shadow less kills dimension. There is a balance there. Even in the Rangefinder Ads and NAPP magazine the pictures he shows as examples are horrific pushed to show shadow elimination but the subject is as flat as a board.

  •  NO CONTROL - You have to learn how to use it and be smart enough to take it off when it can do harm to your shoot.  In no way construe this as a negative, just our findings and they are interesting. It is unique in one sense, in all photography the photographer is the master of the light. With the Light Sphere, we throw that out the window. With the light sphere you are throwing light in all directions totally uncontrolled.  That’s a 360 degrees waste of energy, direction and control.  We used it with three photographers with a combined 100 years of experience, with credentials and knowledgeable of light usage.  We agreed on a few things.

  •  PRO - It's different; Give Gary credit, someone invented the wheel again and he was thinking out of the box. Kinda, that’s one point we give it credit for. The ability to sell a three dollar item for forty-nine dollars takes some chutzpah too. Thats the most credible compliment. If Joe Schmoe invented it they would sell ten this year. Put Gary Fongs name on it and sell millions. He created this image of himself as the worlds greatest, and people will go after the name.   

  •  Didn't work for Dennis Reggie. Nova had a two flash bracket they made and didn't sell. Dennis Reggie put his name on it and it sells for twice the Nova Price. Over 200 dollars for a piece of bent aluminum. Not many are purchased. It backfired.

  •  Appeals to amateurs. Sometimes something is better than nothing.  And it certainly easier than sitting down and trying to learn something like lighting and how to really use it.

  •  Works best under optimum conditions.  Which are low white ceilings and smaller venues with out a lot of reflectance like mirrors and gloss painted walls. Thats the only time.  Might have merit in shooting interior hotel size rooms for real estate ads or rooms with equal dimensions to light it evenly.  But colored walls change the game. The color will determine the cast.  Blue rooms, blue photos. Red rooms, red tinged photos.  *** Especially in Digital which sees all and RAW which misses nothing.

  •  Car interiors set on manual exposure and use the 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 settings on the camera's flash for guidance. Very low power settings to equalize the ambient light. 

  •  The one infinite issue with it. Control. You have no control. It's a take off of surround light first used with bare bulbs.  Bare Bulb shooting techniques have been around for years. Started back in the "Bare Bulb days".