Gary Fong Lightsphere?
Is using the cloud lightsphere with chromedome equivalent to using the clear lightsphere by itself?
Which one do you prefer… the cloud or clear?
I’m probably one of Mr. Fong’s best customers of the spheres. I have always felt they do a great job, and so I have purchased many variables of them. Finally one day after looking at all these things laying about, I decided to do some testing. I did not conduct a “serious” test using my lightmeter to measure output and such, I simply wrote down a long list of photos to take with each sphere and with various domes.
I took the photos and compared them on the computer against my list so I would know exactly which combination of sphere was used with each photo.
By the way, I have both the clear and cloud spheres, the cloud dome, the amber dome, and the chrome dome.
I took photos with each sphere with each dome. After all was said and done, my absoulte favorite combination, and the one I now use at all times with flash, is the CLEAR sphere with the CLOUD inverted dome.
I could not see that the chrome dome gave any extra output, and in fact, it cast a little more harsh shadow than using the standard cloud inverted dome.
I was really surprised to find that I like the clear sphere better than the frosted, (cloud). The cloud DOES eat up more of your Flash Power, and again, I really like the look of the photo with the clear just as well, if not better, than with the cloud sphere.
The amber dome is supposed to be used only under tungsten lighting conditions with the camera white balance set to tungsten. I found this to give no better results than just using the cloud dome and setting the white balance to FLASH. The amber dome was definitely NOT as good as using a grey card to custom set white balance, but overall, you will usually be fine just setting the white balance to flash when using the cloud dome.
So bottom line, I personally prefer the clear sphere with the inverted cloud dome. I also leave the dome on at all times and NEVER point the unit directly at the subject. Depending on your focal range, you can get some pretty drastic “circle of light” effects if you do that. If you keep the dome in place at all times, you ALWAYS have a bounce surface, and even outdoors, you can get very nice fill light… again, another reason to be using the clear sphere.
Indoors I increase my flash exposure by +1. When using the flash as fill flash, I usually just leave it at 0 or perhaps drop it to -1/2.
Test test test is the best thing to do with the spheres, but once you do, you can get some very nice, flattering light from your flash.
steve
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