Tutorial: Rogue FlashBender at FurCon

(See more furry friends at the end of this post)
(See more furry friends at the end of this post)

We’ve been to a few conferences / events recently where we’ve needed flash. But of course, you can’t wander around with your strobe on a mono-pod at these places, so off-camera flash is almost impossible.  Enter the Rogue FlashBender. A large-ish flexible bounce card that allows you aim light where you want it. It’s big enough that the reflected light looks almost as if it was off-camera.

Front of large FlashBender
Front of large FlashBender
Rear of large FlashBender
Rear of large FlashBender

Those woven seams hide some kind of bendy strips that allow you to turn the FlashBender in to almost any shape, from flat to a completely rolled up snood.

Traditional mounting method
Traditional mounting method

The advertised way of mounting the bender on a SpeedLight is shown above. You simply wrap the elasticized Velcro around your flash and you’re done. Then all you need to do it bend it to bounce the light to where you need it. If you pull the slides in you can make it look a bit softbox-ish. If you tilt your flash backwards and bend the Rogue forward it makes a huge light similar to a shoot-through umbrella.

Folding directs light
Folding directs light

Most people simple fold the top down and twist the corners in. It works beautifully.

However, thanks to a YouTube video we can no longer find, we do things a little differently.

Alternative mounting style
Alternative mounting style

If you mount the FlashBender sideways on, you’ll find that you have way more flexibility when out shooting.

Converts to landscape
Landscape mode

When taking landscape pictures the sideways mounting works just like a traditionally mounted FlashBender.

Perfect for portrait shooting
Portrait mode

However, you can switch to portrait shooting simply by twisting the flash head. If you’d mounted the bender the traditional way, you’d need to take it off and reposition it. I’ve not idea why the Rogue people tell you to mount it any other way.

To prove all this works rather nicely, we headed off to FurCon so make nice with large animals. Here’s some snaps.

FurCon7 FurCon6 FurCon5 FurCon4 FurCon2 FurCon1

Comments

One response to “Tutorial: Rogue FlashBender at FurCon”

  1. Lloydford Avatar
    Lloydford

    The portrait positioning of the Flashbender was helpful to me. Very simple but makes a massive difference.

Come on, talk to us!