An easy way of making your off-camera flash SO MUCH BETTER: The Flash Diffuser

Using an Olympus flash FL-50 gives you a lot of freedom in how to direct your flash. But problems still arise in various scenarios.

For example, if you are taking a picture of someone who is standing in front of a wall, his shadow will be cast onto the wall.

If that's happened to you, it's not a pretty thing. It can make their head look larger, their nose look weird, their chin jut out. And let's face it, people want to look BETTER in pictures, not worse!

Furthermore, because the off-camera flash is so strong, it can also be very harsh on close subjects. That is an epic FAIL in photography.

My Olympus Flash FL-50R comes with it's own diffuser (as do some other external flashes), but I found that adding a Sto-fen Omnibounce did a better job. Some people use larger diffusers from Gary Fong, but I haven't tried that out, yet.

Although it is possible to reduce the problems mentioned above by bouncing the flash and reducing the flash output, using a diffuser immediately softens the light. It "diffuses" the light so that it doesn't hit your subject directly, by essentially spreading the flash light out.

This will give your image a more natural look, without dialing down the flash power (which could reduce your fill effect, something you don't always want to do).

If you're now interested in buying a diffuser for your off-camera flash, you can try out several approaches. The first couple of ways are the cheap, and basically free ways of doing things.

1 - Use some tissue and tape it to your flash. This isn't ideal, but it definitely works in softening the light. This was something I tried at first before buying the Sto-fen Omnibounce, to see if it'll work. And it did.

2 - Use an index card. This isn't technically a diffuser, but it will spread the light around, because the light bounces off the card. Make sure the card is at around a 45 degree angle when attached to your Olympus flash!

3 - If you already have a white diffuser, then great! Something you can do to add some magic to your pictures is to tape colored transparent sheets to your diffuser. This will add surreal colors. Try it out!