Which pop-up flash modifier produces the most natural photos?

Love your Olympus, Nikon, Pentax, Fuji FinePix, Sigma, or Canon SLR?

Hate the ugly pop-up flash photos?

See the solutions!

Evil red eye?

Weird dark shadow in
foreground or on side?

Background too dark?

Unflattering skin tones?

Dark shadows?

Unappealing Ebay photos?

Because
Professor Kobré
hates looking at
ugly flash photos!

• The softness of light results from the size of the light source in relation to the subject. Bouncing a flash effectively increases the size of a light source and thus nicely disperses and diffuses light over a relatively large area. A small diffuser placed in front of the pop-up flash cannot significantly enlarge the flash's tiny light source... so cannot evenly illuminate a scene.
• The physics of light is that it falls off at the inverse square: Something near to the light source receives more light than something farther away. That’s why the background is darker in the three pictures with the flash coming directly from the camera, even though diffused in the second and third photos.
• Putting a diffuser in front of a pop-up flash also does NOT change the unnatural direction of the light (aligned with your forehead), which is another of the reasons direct flash is awful. The wall bounce, above, emulates window light. A ceiling bounce emulates typical room lighting conditions.