Here I have placed my diffuser directly behind the bottle and the flash zoomed to a narrow beam behind it. Exposure is set for the surface of the diffuser which is very bright, so the flash set to 1/128 power to allow an f/8 aperture.<br /> <br /> The cross in the light pattern is created by the fresnel lens in the flash at close range. That cross pattern is less than ideal for most photographs so normally I would elimiate it by using double diffusion of my light source. That, however, substantially increases the complexity of the setup.<br /> <br /> As a side note, the reason you pay good money for good quality softboxes is that they have an internal baffle specifically designed to smooth out any unevenness in the light source.
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