Thursday, January 1, 2009

Wrap your Sto-Fen diffusers


Portfolio series 2008-26
Originally uploaded by Dalantech.
I do a lot of things with my light that some of you might not want to do, or care to. Taking a hot glue gun to your MT-24EX will void it's warranty, and I've cut the glue off of my flash heads so I could try something new to diffuse them so many times that I'm stunned they haven't fallen appart...

The easiest way to get good light from the MT-24EX and at the same time do no damage to the flash heads is to simply wrap the outside of a set of Sto-Fen diffusers with Gaffers tape. The tape serves two purposes: To keep the Sto-Fens on your flash heads better than the shallow indent on the flash heads that the diffusers clip onto, and to force more of the light from the flash heads out the front of the diffusers to give you a shorter flash duration (less glare, easier to freeze motion, etc.).

A simple modification that will make a big difference in the quality of the light that you'll get from the MT-24EX. The photo included with this post was taken with a wrapped set of Sto-Fens. Granted I've got a 1/8 CTO gel and a heavy frost diffusion plastic hot glued directly to the flash head, but the tests that I did with just a wrapped set of Sto-Fens looked really good and won't void your warranty...

4 comments:

Mike said...

Great idea John! It's almost "snoot-like" throwing the light where you want it.

Now to see if I have any in the house or if I'll need to make a trip tomorrow :)

Dalantech said...

You brought up a cool "side effect" Mike -the Sto-Fen does act like a snoot when you wrap it with Gaffers tape, and you do get a lot more control over where the light is hitting the scene...

p4pictures said...

Wow some great photos, and a neat tip on the MT-24EX. I'd not thought much about diffusing mine, but I guess it's just another small size lightsource after all.

Dalantech said...

Thanks p4pictures :)