Flash Diffuser - Gary Fong Collapsible Lightsphere

A short time ago, I landed a gig taking photos at a corporate event, scheduled for the end of May. I'll have to be taking photos in the early evening, so will be needing flash. I knew right away that my Flashbender, which I've been using for about a year, would be impractical because of its size. So I started looking around for a more efficient alternative.

With some advice from my mentor, Kyla Brown, photographer extraordinaire, I settled on Gary Fong's Collapsible Lightsphere ($60 on amazon.ca, $45 on amazon.com - what a surprise!).

Yesterday, I got to take it out for a good test drive, doing a shoot of several cats at ICAN. All I can say is, I LOVE this tool! Easy to work with, nice effect softening the flash - and if I can figure it out, anyone can!

This was my first "official" shoot with the Canon 1D Mark IV, too.

Here's my favourite shot taken with the Fong Lightsphere:

That said, the best shot of the day (imho) was taken without flash - the flash batteries were dying towards the end of the "session" with this cat, and this was taken with just window light:

The whole collection can be viewed on my Smugmug site. Btw, the peachy tint on the kitten photos is due to the new bright orange colour on two of the walls - I could've corrected the blanket/sheet to white (which is what they were), but quite like the tint for the little ones - what do you think?