Despite the fact that I’ve been shooting photos for well over 20 years at this point, I’ve never really used flash that much. There has, in fact, been extended periods of not even owning a flash in my life.

I’ve been shooting a lot of concerts and at the large ones there’s a pretty standard set of rules: first three songs only, no flash. This was true for Joanna Newsom and Robin Pecknold on Thursday night, so when I was asked to shoot a concert on Friday I left my flash at home. The shots turned out well, and everybody’s fairly happy but flash would have helped.

I picked up a Rogue Flashbender on Saturday, to give me more flexibility. It’s a versatile and flexible tool that’s easy to pack and carry.

The Waterfront Stage at the Under the Volcano Festival was completely unlit and the day was gloomy, so it gave me the perfect chance to play with the Flashbender. I was quite happy to see that it helped, turning what would have been a darkly lit almost impossible situation into some usable photos. All of the pairs below were shot with the same shutter speeds and aperture settings (you can see that the sunlit backgrounds are exposed similarly in them), the first one including a flash with the Flashbender in place and the second one with no flash.

Bringing the shadows up in post-processing in the second photos does improve them, but the results are still not as good as the ones produced by the Flashbender.

It’s a small, compact and easy to carry accessory that’s likely to have me shooting with flash quite a bit more often in the future. Quite a good investment, I think.

Posted by skooter at 3:30 PM This entry is filed under Camera.
This entry is tagged: Flash, Photography, Rogue Flashbender, Under the Volcano