Somewhere on the internet I read and article in which the author came to conclusion that the best light diffuser for a strobe is a bubble-wrap you get from post office for packaging. he said he's been using this trick for over thirty years and doesn't need any commercial products like Stofen omni-bounce. As I was curious about this I decided to try it out by myself.
My wife had a bunch of this wrap at work and I asked her to bring some home. I cut a strip of 30x17cm for my Sigma flash and attached it to it with a rubber band so that about 7cm of the wrap was coming out from the flash. (picture 1).
After a little testing I decided to take a picture through a mirror to see what kind of light spread it created (picture 2). When the flash fires, the whole wrap becomes a bulb illuminating the ceiling, surround walls and the target. Ofcourse the flash was directed toward the ceiling.
So later that day I went out with kids and I took a picture of Aliisa so that the wrap was attached to my strobe (picture 3). The light in Aliisa's picture was even and soft so the wrap obviously did something.
That evening I wanted to try out the diffuser indoors on my younger daughter Adele. I setup a dark blue background and placed Adele in front of it and took a picture while I had a chance (picture 4). Also in this case the light was soft and diffused.
The good this about bubble-plastic wrap is that it is cheap, you don't have to worry about breaking it as you can easily get a replacement and also fits your pocket well.
All in all I am positively surprised on the quality of flash-photography using a bubble-wrap as a diffuser and I really recommend everyone to at least try it out.
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