Light Penetration During Budding

Do the fan leaves still absorb light for the developing buds during flowering, or do the buds absorb the light themselves? I've seen people talk of cutting the bigger fan leaves off during flowering in order to allow the buds more light, but wouldn't cutting a lot of fan leaves hurt the general health of the plant somehow?

This is how I approach fan leaves during the flowering stage. If they are not diseased more than 50% with mildew,mold,insect attack,light damage,nutrient toxicity then I leave them off. Fan leaves are the solar panels when it comes to converting light into energy in the process of photosynthesis. Sometimes when you cut foliage off when it is completely healthy it can induce shock which would result in hermpahrodiism or seeding out. There are people out there that prefer to remove fan leaves to allow more light to penetrate the bottom of the plant better and are fortunate that their end product is not affected time and time again. There are some that when they do the removing of fan leaves then their product quality suffers. Genetics plays an important role whether how much you can do to an already very hearty plant. Just giving you my opinion.