Until I discovered how difficult it is to find reviews of some of the more obscure camera accessories, I hadn’t really considered writing them myself. Recently, I decided to buy a flash diffuser. I had done some interesting experiments with homemade ones and some of them worked pretty well. However, there is no denying that my homemade efforts were far from as pretty as those made by more skilled DIYers and I had been impressed by the reviews of the commercial offerings by people like Micael Widell. He has a YouTube video that reviews all the main makes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=864ZOCtUWJU). While he expresses a liking for one in particular, all of them do a more than reasonable job including ones that can be bought for a few Euros. Other than the difficulty of deciding between them on the basis of performance, the problem with the better and more complex offerings from the likes of AK, Cygnustech, and Popeshield is that of their price. Don’t get me wrong, because they are made in small numbers and come in a variety versions to suit different cameras and flashes, they are all probably good value for money and to an extent, as always, you get what you pay for. What is clear is that a good diffuser makes an enormous difference, diffusing and spreading the light from the flash and enabling it to be mounted in the camera’s hot shoe even when taking seriously close-up pictures. Without a diffuser, because the light comes from a small flash-head window, the shadows can be harsh and the image can show strong specular highlights. When it comes to macro-photography, The small clip-on diffusers that come with most flash-guns are not at all useful – they are too small and direct too much of the light forward rather than down onto a small object close to the front of the lens.
I considered buying one of the makes that I had seen reviewed. The results looked excellent. However, I then came across a Chinese diffuser for sale on AliExpress. It had some interesting features and looked like it should perform pretty well. It had for example, a large light emitting area, a top shield to direct more of the light down onto the subject, and a ‘scoop’ under the lens to throw some of the light up onto it from underneath. It also had a ‘droop’ that could be attached to the front of the diffuser to throw more light behind the subject. A second sheet of diffusing material inside the main body of the diffuser implied that the light would be nicely diffuse. I have to admit that main appeal was that it cost less than half of its western rivals. I set about trying to find a review of this “Guage” diffuser but apart from a few very short remarks about it on AliExpress, I couldn’t find anything useful. I was reassured that the short reviews on AliExpress were largely postive…so I bought one.
The Guage macro diffuser comes in three sizes mini, small and large. These each fit a range of lenses so because they are of very different dimensions, I wasn’t expecting a great fit to both my 60mm and 90mm OM macro lenses. This is the first reason why the more expensive offerings from the US, Australia etc. have an advantage – there are either more options on offer or the diffuser is directly tailored to fit a lens, flash and camera body. The next slight downside was that as is often the case, there were a variety of different AliExpress shops offering what looked like the same thing, all at different prices! However, on closer inspection it turned out that there were some differences with some shops offering an older version of the same diffuser and others touting updated models. I bought an updated, small diffuser from this supplier (https://shorturl.at/xq3sx). It cost 42 Euros. AliExpress has a 10 day transport guarantee (in practice this can be longer because they start the clock when the item has been dispatched). This is a plus for the Chinese diffuser because I understand from others that you can sometimes wait quite a while for delivery of some of its rivals – and I mean a long time.
I wasn’t at all sure about the quality of the item on offer. However, it looked to be made of much the same materials as some of the more expensive diffusers. The only material difference that I could see from the pictures on AliExpress was that the ”hood’ did not have a silver reflective lining rather it had a very shiny white inside surface. From my own experiments with reflectors, I doubt this makes much difference to the light output in either brightness or colour temperature. It was delivered in about 14 days. It came rolled and as there wasn’t a lot of packing, I was concerned it might be damaged and that the ‘rolling’ might distort the parts and make them difficult to assemble. In fact, it was totally undamaged. As for the assembly, the instructions sent with it were, to be polite, fit only for immediately dispatch into the rubbish bin. Fortunately, there is a video on AliExpress that albeit intended for the ‘old model’, made it clear how to assemble all the pieces. I soon had the assembly complete – it took maybe 15 minutes the first time but I could probably put it together in 2 now that I know where everything goes.
The pictures above show the diffuser mounted on an OM-1 Mk2 and an EM-1 Mk 2, the former with an OM 90mm Pro macro les and the latter with the much smaller OM 60mm macro. In practice you don’t necessarily have to fit either the ‘scoop’ or the ‘droop’. However, the droop does help hold the diffuser on the 90mm – pushing it up a little so the diffuser’s surface will send light a little further forward such that more of it will clear the end of the lens. My opinion, without access to other diffusers for comparison, is that the quality of the materials used and the poppers that hold the Guage diffuser together is good or certainly, good enough. The fit to my Godox V350o was OK but one got the feeling that a slightly bigger flash head would have been a better fit. That said, the adhesive ‘Velcro’ and the strap that winds around the flash head, hold it very securely in place – the only downside of the fit is that you have to be careful how you position it on the flash head and I wouldn’t want to assemble the diffuser every time I go out. Yes, you could easily take it to bits and fold it flat or roll it but then you would have the somewhat fiddly job of reassembling it. The fit to the two lenses I have was in my view pretty good – better on the 60mm than the 90mm but still perfectly respectable. The inclusion of several options for the positioning of the poppers on the ‘scoop’ mean you can get a fair fit round the two lenses even though they are of very different diameters and lengths. Through adjusting how you fix the diffuser to the flash-head, you also have some scope to adjust how far the diffuser extends forward but you do have to make sure that you have fitted it square on to the flash.
So, to the big question! How does the diffuser perform? I am going to stick my neck out…it performs much better than any of my homemade ones and I suspect it’s as good as any of the commercial offerings. That statement has to be taken with a pinch of salt because I cannot directly compare the AK, CygnusTech etc. to the Guage diffuser. You pay your money and you take your choice. Its big advantages are its price, its rapid delivery, the quality of the materials, and the fact it appears to work well. The downsides are that it isn’t tailored, the diffusion of the other makes could possibly be a little bit better and the instructions that come with it are well…useless! I am not disappointed with my purchase.
A second article on the subject of diffusers will examine the pro’s and con’s of using polarizing filters to eliminate reflections when taking flash photographs. By using polarizing filters can you get adequate photos with a smaller diffuser and how good are such polarizing setups at eliminating unpleasant highlights??
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