Reddit reviews Gary Fong Puffer Pop Up flash Diffuser for DSLR's CANON / NIKON / OLYMPUS / PENTAX (excluding Canon T4i)

My fiancé buys me neat (and cheap!) camera gear every year for christmas, so far I've gotten:

• Gary Fong Puffer $18.99 (a flash diffuser)
  
• Targus Battery Grip $25.98 (this is somewhat camera specific)
  
• Hot shoe spirit level $5 (this is cheap as hell and really cool!)
  
• Canon Monopod $34.95 (I have the Monopod 100 but it's no longer available. These are great for when a tripod is too bulky and sturdy enough to use as a light walking stick)
  
• Dolica Tripod $39.99 (Great prosumer tripod, not a pro tripod though)
  
• Lens cap keeper $1.91 (sticks to any lens cap and then attaches to the lens body to stop the lens cap from falling off)
  
  All of these things are pretty awesome for me, a serious hobbyist with a Nikon D5000 DSLR.
  
  Having said that, what I want for Christmas is:
  
  
• 52mm Neutral Density Filters ($31.99) and 62mm Neutral Density Filters ($42.99), these are the same set for both my lenses, they let you do longer exposures under brighter light conditions. I want them for a shoot in early December though so will probably buy them before that myself ;)
  
• A gradiated ND filter ($11.99), for the same reasons as above but only for one half of the exposure, with a gradient transition
  
• Panoramic Image tripod head ($16.95) for creating seamless panoramas
  
  Hopefully this helps!

Not sure how you're diffusing, but I bought one of these a while ago and was impressed at how well it works. It's still a direct light source so the pictures will look a little flatter than shooting with a bounce or off-camera flash would but for $20 vs. hundreds for a speedlight system it's a really good start. But I bet with as handy as you guys appear to be I bet you've already built your own!

something like this

I think it gets up there is speed in Western parts of NE but I don't usually make it any where past 75.

I actually forgot about my D300. I've got one that /u/beav0901dm's GF might buy off me for cheap with a kit lens.

I've got one fixed lens (35mm if I recall correctly). I'd like to get a really nice 50mm at some point.

Do you shoot manual? How about lighting etc? I was thinking about picking up a flash but in the mean time got a diffuser for the shitty built in flash.

A 7D is still roughly half the price of a 5D. It's not a full-frame sensor, etc. I'm not saying it's not a nice camera, but professionals would see it as a back-up camera, not their main camera body.

Pros don't skimp on camera bodies because that's about 10-20% of what gets spent on equipment in a year.

One of my old backup camera bodies is a 40D. It has a pop-up flash built in. I've never used the built-in flash, and I bought it new 4 or 5 years ago.

One thing this conversation has led me to believe: there is probably more than one reason those bodies don't have a built-in flash.

But neither did a Pentax K1000, Canon AE-1, Olympus OM, or any other old inexpensive film SLR.

If you have a camera body with the flash and no budget for a high-end flash, invest $22 or so in this:

http://www.amazon.com/Gary-Fong-Diffuser-OLYMPUS-excluding/dp/B0011000R6/

It's a great little diffuser for those harsh pop-up flashes. I own a few of his products, and they're all wonderful. I've never owned this particular diffuser, but I have recommended it to folks that bought one and let me play with it. My neighbor's 14-year-old kid is getting some great results. I didn't have his talent when I was 14. He's gonna be awesome.

oh, I also just got the Gary Fong puffer that fits into Canon, Nikon, or Sony hot shoes and diffuses light from your pop-up flash. Not bad for $18. I haven't played with it extensively yet, but I'm shooting a conference with high ceilings (no bounce) so I thought I'd get a lot of use out of it then.
Puffer on Amazon