Don't spend your money on a Lightsphere contraption as I bought two full systems from Gary Fong and they are expensive for what they are. They add a lot of weight to the end of your flash's swivel head where if you are moving through a crowd it will quickly fall off, get lost and most importantly get in the way of doing any other work. I lost one dome top and then I lost the main part of the rubber bowl where I could never find it. 100's of dollars lost plus it zaps the power of your flash when you need light at more of a distance. Another fact you will spend more time telling guests what it is and how it works then shooting. Major drawback! The less attention I get the better when I'm working unless its a pretty girl. If you're going to get a diffuser I'd recommend the smaller Omni Bounce unit. Lower dollar item with similar results. Next issue is the type of lighting that will be seen at this event. Most of the time its the tungsten lighting and its the most obtrusive orange/amber lighting available. Canon cameras never seem to do a good job capturing the proper white balance in these conditions plus you want to match up your flashes light to the surrounding light as much as you can. No point in having a orange background with your subject a whitish blue. Solution, buy a photography gel in the proper amber color then cut it down and insert it into the Omni-Bounce unit. Or you could buy their amber colored unit for shooting in tungsten lighting conditions. Both will do a better job then just using the flash alone.


Also, like mentioned before drag the shutter a bit which means set a little lower shutter speed to capture more light in the background but let the flash light up your subject which I like to select that power option. I used to go into events already set up in camera manual mode, flash manual mode, manual focus, lens set to around f/4, ISO 800 or 1600 depending on the amount of light, amber gel strapped to the flash, shutter set at 1/30 to 1/50 of a sec, Image stabilization on if the lens has it and then adjust from there to get the results you want. Also pay with WB but keep it in the higher numbers. Go in early and take test shots until you get comfortable with the right combination. Sometimes I had to take multiple pictures of the same shot to get it right at first or if the lighting changes from place to place. People will usually understand and pose for multiple shots when needed. Zoom in on the shoot after you take it and make sure everyone's eye's are open.


Another solution that works pretty good is to turn down your flash with its compensation adjustment. Kind of use it like a fill flash where you can get good results with it facing directly forward. You will want to gel the 430EX because like I mentioned there will most likely be a big difference in color temperature.


I have years of experience shooting this type of stuff where part of my full time newspaper job unfortunately included me shooting many, many indoor activities like high society balls, meetings, dances, award ceremonies, luncheons, banquets and etc and these are some things that I had to learn on my own.