TESTING WHAT?
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 people playing the game of testing of modifiers.
Why?, 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. The only tests that count are the ones you run, but if it makes them happy let them play critic.
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. They'll be sure to sell.
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 HEARTBURN
Occurs when 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. It is almost 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.
THE REAL TEST - KA BOOM
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.
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. 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.
PRO COST- It's different; Give Gary credit, someone invented the wheel again and he was thinking out of the box. He does his thinking at the bank. 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. His name sells the Tupperware.
APPEALS TO NEWBIES- 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 that knowledge. It's quite common to take the easy way out when hyped in this industry.
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.
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.
SUMMARY
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".
Too much information. In some examples we shot a typical wedding aisle with two people walking down and it blew out the couple and lit the side rows both with folks with good expressions and a few catastrophes. What’s a catastrophe? Uncle Joe blowing his nose. Thats a Pulitzer Prize.
Because of the bounce and diffusion it uses more power before the squelching can conserve power. And it slams F stops to boot. Kills the reserves in the battery pack and kills your strobe too as it resorts to full power all the time. It is really not controllable. The closest thing in the world today to compare it to is a hand grenade. It’s the right shape at least. You use it and you can't be sure of the results. Sometimes you flush someone from the non-combatants.