Field Review: Gary Fong Origami (Day 1)

After reviewing the Gary Lightsphere Collapsible and being very impressed with its usage in practical photography situations, the Gary Fong Origami ended up at my doorstep for review/keeps. It’s a very unique item unlike anything I’ve seen before. When I was being shown a demo of the unit back at Photo Plus, I looked at the unit in complete confusion saying to myself, “How the heck am I supposed to use this?”

Gary Fong’s Own Demo

In The Package

The proper name of this unit is the Gary Fong Origami Flash Diffusion Systembut for the sake of the review it will be called the Origami.

In the plastic bag that it comes in, you get the main diffuser, a white flap, an amber flap, a velcro belt, and a special rubber band. Now before you go on and say, “Chris, what are you doing reviewing a piece of plastic?” hear me out and keep reading because this actually works very ingeniously.

How it Works

First off, you’ll need to place the rubber band around your flash head like in the image above.

Next place the main diffuser around the edge of the flash and have it wrap around. Ensure that the bottom part of the diffuser is placed below the rubber band to assure that it will always stay on.

When it’s wrapped around like in the image above, you’ll need to secure it using the velcro belt. After this, you can move the flap around to adjust the level of warmness or coolness of your flash output.

In my short time with the unit so far, I’ve really seen no need for the white flap because the main diffuser gives off such cool light as it is. Affixing the amber flap and moving it up or down dials in different levels of warmth to the images.

How to Use it

First off, make sure that the diffuser is facing your subject. Turn your flash into an, “L” shape as seen above. This is the ideal way of using it. However, as you’ll see in future tests, there is no problem using it with your flash straight up as it will also give off warm light if you’d like it too.

The point of this is that when the flash output hits the amber area, it warms the light. In the position shown above, the light is relatively warm.

In this position, the light becomes very cool.

In this position, the light became very cool during my tests.

In this position, the light was gorgeous and warm. Think of this as akin to warm sunlight. It’s really quite lovely.

Coming in the rest of the field review: test images and how the Origami actually works in use at an event, wedding, portraits, etc.

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