The Photography Diffuser - A Portable Cloud!

The photography diffuser is one of the most useful pieces of equipment a photographer can own! They can smooth out wrinkles, diffuse the light, help us control our shadows and tone down those harsh contrasts! They are indispensable!First...what is a photography diffuser?There are a couple different types of photo gear that could be considered a diffuser. You could smear some Vaseline over the lens - it's diffusing the light that goes into the camera and could be called a photography diffuser. Or, you could have a cloud passing by in front of the sun and THAT TOO could be called a diffuser!For the purposes of this article, we'll think of anything put on the lens as a filter and anything put in front of the light source as a diffuser. Basically, a diffuser will take the incoming light and make it less directional. This causes the light to go every which direction...which in turn makes the light source bigger and less intense. This can have a lot of beneficial qualities in our photographs.As I said, a cloud can be a photography diffuser...Imagine the sun. In relation to our size, it's just a tiny little thing way up there in the sky. Since it is very bright, yet small, it creates some pretty harsh, black shadows.Imagine a white puffy cloud floating in front of the sun...What happens?Now the sunlight is hitting the back of the cloud and bouncing all over the place! When the - diffused - light comes through the cloud, it has now turned the entire cloud into a huge diffused light source.Since our light is now diffused, it's softer and less intense. Plus since the light source is much bigger, the light tends to wrap around our subject and soften or even almost eliminate the shadows!That's a diffuser and ALL diffusers operate on the same principle. Now imagine a studio strobe lighting system. We don't generally have clouds floating around in the studio so how can we diffuse our lights? Easy! Just put some translucent material in front of the light.Have you seen photographers shooting their light through umbrellas? That's a diffuser. Diffusers can be called umbrellas, softboxes, screens and dozens of other names depending on the shape and materials they are made of.But, if you think of a photography diffuser as nothing more than a man made cloud, you should have no trouble understanding how they work and when they should be used.