Gary Fong – “The Puffer”

Fong "Puffer"

A while back, my Speedlight decided to stop working.  As you all know, the pop up flash on your camera can be pretty harsh, so I needed to find something that could replace the speedlight without the couple hundred dollar price tag.  I did without for a while, but the results were not good.  Harsh shadows behind people and flash glare ruined a lot of my shots.

I remembered that I had seen a vendor at the 2008 PhotoPlus Expo in NYC.  They had some funky looking diffusers, but the lines were pretty long, so I moved on.  I went into my local Ritz store to grab something quickly one day and I saw “The Puffer” on the shelf.  After a few questions, I decided to pick one up. Heck, it was only $20, so if it wasn’t great, I hadn’t lost much.  When I got it home I opened up the package and pulled out two pieces.

The two pieces were made entirely of plastic, and at first I was a little worried about snapping them when putting the device together or mounting it to the camera.  The base is a formed plastic piece that will slide into the hot shoe.  It has two small round dowels that slide into one of the eight holes on each side of the diffuser.  The diffuser looks like a portion of a golf ball, with tons of dimples in it to diffuse the light.  The back has 8 holes to raise or lower the diffuser depending on where you need more or less light.  It is a little tight going into the hot shoe, but once it, it is very secure.  It also seems to work pretty well.

Rear View

Puffer Front

I also took some shots of the unit on my Nikon D70.  The pics were taken with a little point and shoot, so they aren’t great.  I took shots of the top and back to show what it looks like when mounted.

Rear Mounted

Side View

As you can see in the bottom picture, the diffuser was set on the second hole from the top.  I would normally use it just below the middle hole to be aligned correctly with the on board flash.  Here are four shots I took.  Two were taken with the Puffer and two were taken without.  Sorry for the food products, as they were handy, so I used them.

When I shot these photos, I did not change the settings on the camera.  The only difference was whether the Puffer was on or off the camera.  You can see a huge difference in the brightness and colors in both pictures that the flash was used on.

I would have to say that the Gary Fong “Puffer” is definitely worth the money.  I have used it in a few situations and it seems to do the job a lot better than the on board flash would do.

Without the Puffer

With the Puffer

Without the Puffer

With the Puffer