Joe Orange , Mar 01, 2009; 04:59 a.m.
I have the Lightsphere II but I must be doing something drastically wrong because a lot of my portrait shots have hard shadows under the chin.
I've tried it with the dome on, off, different flash settings and in different surroundings etc but whilst the face is generally lit ok, there are deep dark horrible chin shadows and I can't work it out.
The whole point of it, was to eliminate these very shadows without too much fuss, so I must be doing something wrong given that it gives good results for many it seems.
Any help/insights would be gratefully appreciated.
Nathan Stiles , Mar 01, 2009; 09:28 a.m.
Bob O'Sullivan , Mar 01, 2009; 09:53 a.m.
Tell your subjects to tilt their heads up a bit. That's all I can think of without seeing an example and your shooting set up. Also, you're not telling us much about the suroundings. Litghtspheres work dirrently in different environments. For intance, outside there's nothing for the difracted light to bounce off of. So you get a bit of softening but no fill.
Mike Bisom 
, Mar 01, 2009; 12:31 p.m.
To add to what Bob said, you may be dialing in more FEC since the Lightsphere wastes a lot of forward light. So you turn up the FEC- but this won't help with shadows under the chin because the ratio is inherently flawed: too much light up, bouncing off the ceiling (which is generally good), but not enough light going forward since A) it has a 360 degree spread and B) it is going through a piece of plastic. Google ABBC (a better bounce card). You can make your own, cheap and effective. Or if you want to spend some money there is the Demb diffuser (equally good and that ability to flag) or Lumiquest also makes a bounce card. All of which will do better than a Lightsphere. How do I know, I have used most of them (haven't used a Demb).
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA 
, Mar 01, 2009; 04:28 p.m.
First off, nothing will 'eliminate' shadows. In the right environment the LS can diffuse the shadows enough that they are very light and not hard-edged. Used in anything less than an ideal environment, you will start to get the chin shadow and harder shadows in general, not to mention color cast.
Also, you will get the chin shadow if your subject is fairly close to you/the LS--within 6-8 feet--it gets worse the less ideal the environment. The ideal environment is white walls/ceiling and not large.
Think about how the LS works. it take the beam from the flash and while most of the beam goes toward the ceiling, some of it is 'captured' and pushed out all around, in a 360 degree pattern. That light is bounced off walls. In the ideal environment, the light gets bounced all around and into shadows, making them diffuse. In less than ideal environments, the light gets bounced around but there isn't enough reflectance from the surroundings to make the shadows diffuse--hence the chin shadow.
Then, if the subject is near, the light hits the subject, in effect, 'too soon'. TTL makes the light keep going for what it thinks is the correct exposure. This effect is worse if you dial a wide zoom angle in, because some of that beam goes directly out the front and onto the subject. Most flash units automatically dial a 50mm zoom setting if the flash head is tilted. The dome (in the tilted position) is similar to this, because it absorbs some of the upward beam, making TTL push more out the front and sides.
Plus, if you use it outside, with nothing to bounce off, really, the less-than-ideal effect is even more pronounced.
What kind of portrait shots are you doing that you aren't using directional light?
Joe Orange , Mar 01, 2009; 04:39 p.m.
Here is an example of a quickly taken shot in a corridor with white walls around 10-15 feet high.
Nothing too demanding subject, location or exposure-wise yet there's a horrible hard shadow under the chin.
Lightsphere shot with hard shadow under chin
Mike Bisom , Mar 01, 2009; 04:43 p.m.
The ratio is flawed. Try the same shot with a bounce card.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA , Mar 01, 2009; 05:02 p.m.
Does your flash automatically change the zoom setting to 50mm? What flash, what camera? Looks like the light going out the front was too strong--see my previous post. If this was a corridor with white walls, I would have bounced the flash head behind me, no LS, no nothing.
Peter Cofran , Mar 01, 2009; 05:18 p.m.
Looks like you're using one light, dead on, thats too far away. Move the key closer, it should be no farther than 3 ft away and to the side but no more than 45 degrees. This will place the shadow on the other side of the face. Then add either another strobe or position a reflector on the other side as the fill. Roughly eye level (lower than the key), this will reduce the shadow under the chin. You can even put a second reflector underneath the chin.
Joe Orange , Mar 01, 2009; 05:34 p.m.
Shot with an SB-800 on a D2X through a 28-70mm at 28mm from approx 5 ft away.
It could be I was too close to her for the Lightsphere to do its thing, although on one of Gary Fong's video demos he photographs a girl sitting down in a hotel corridor from 4-5 feet away at best and the results lacked hard shadows
My lighting set-up has usually been off-camera brollies, softboxes etc, so I'm relatively new to flashguns and shooting on the go.
Which I guess is why I got a Lightsphere in the first place - to soften all those nasty flashgun shadows without having think too hard.
