New Profoto ComPact 300R's

My new Profoto lights came in today! I got a kit of two 300 ws Profoto monolights with reflectors, tripods, and a case. Best of all, the "R" in the model name means they're radio-enabled with built-in 32-channel PocketWizards.

Here is a play-by-play on the unwrapping ceremony:














I got a great deal on these. Relatively speaking, they were cheap compared to list price. In percentage terms relative to my capital expenditure budget, they definitely were NOT cheap!

I've been shopping all year though for a set of monolights. Profoto has the very best reputation but also the highest prices of anyone. This is a very entry-level set, but I could at least afford them. Bowens is coming out with a new line of monolights that I nearly bought, but they've just been too slow to market. You have to buy add-on cards for them as well for the PocketWizard receivers. Other manufacturer's have similar offerings. While I could have gotten more watt/seconds per dollar with another brand, paying extra on top of that for the PocketWizards made this kit come out to a decent deal. Now I just need to make some pictures to recoup the cost and then start making money with it. (It's good to have goals.)

So far I'm extremely impressed with Profoto except for the tripods that came with the kit. They work, to some degree. That's the only good thing I can say about them. Can you believe they didn't even ship air-cushioned light stands with these heavy monolights? Nope. When the light is raised to 6+ feet it gets very wobbly as well. My Impact light stands are air-cushioned and of much better quality than what Profoto shipped. I'll probably put the Impact stands in the Profoto case and use the others for my Nikon Speedlights.

Lights, camera, action!

All images are Copyright Terry Smith, 2009. All Rights Reserved.

Flashing it for $2.00

I was pretty excited last weekend to pick up this old Yashica Pro-50DX flash at a junk store that I visit frequently for only $2.00. I didn't know at the time if it would work, but it was certainly worth the risk. Luckily, it does!


It will make a great off-camera flash for putting a splash of light in places. I'll put velcro on the sides, so I can attach my flash gels to it (See the Rosco Cinegel post.) and use it on portraits, product shots and still-lifes, etc. It's always nice to have more small lights to add in here or there. This little guy packs a punch too!


The flash doesn't have any power settings, but that is easily controlled with some neutral density gels. It has a sync cable that I could tap into, but first I'm going to try an optical slave off of eBay. There are some that ship out of Hong Kong for $10 including shipping which should fire it whenever my other flashes go off.

This next find is a piece of plastic trash. It's an all-plastic 35mm film camera. My mom actually got one almost just like this free in the mail once when I was kid. I shot a roll or two with it, but it was useless. The film didn't advance correctly.

However, it's actually what I had mind when I went to this junk store recently. I'd seen them there before, and I picked this one up for 50 cents. It's worth less. I offered 25 and they countered at 50. The place actually sells donated items to raise money for charity, so I didn't complain.

So what am I going to do with it? Well, I bought it for this one little piece right on the top, the flash shoe:

Notice that it unscrews. Not immediately, but someday when I need it, I'll take the flash shoe off and mount it on something so I can place a light where I want it. If I pick up another one someday, I might build my own bracket for mounting two flashes within a softbox.

If you have any old flash equipment in your closet that you want to get rid of contact me!

All images are Copyright Terry Smith, 2009. All Rights Reserved.

Zack Arias Creative Lighting Presentation

Zack Arias has just posted a PDF he used for a PDN virtual trade show. If you're interested in lighting it's worth taking a look at. The comments section of the blog post is a Q&A session on lighting as well. Read the blog here.

Westcott 5-in-1 Reflector Product Review

Looking to improve your photos? One of the most powerful and useful pieces of equipment you can buy, and also one of the cheapest, is a 5-in-1 reflector. In fact, a good quality reflector is an essential piece of equipment for every serious photographer. The Westcott 5-in-1 reflector is an extremely well-made product and very affordable at only $40 (at the time of this review). I own the 40" (1 meter) reflector and highly recommend it.

"5-in-1" means that it contains silver, gold, white, and black surfaces plus, with all of the covers removed, a translucent surface. Let's look at each of these:

• White Reflector - Do your subjects have raccoon eyes? A white reflector can be used to bounce light into shadows. If you are using a off-camera flash you can also bounce light off of the white reflector itself to create a larger light source.


• Silver Reflector - A silver reflector serves the same purpose as white but produces more specular highlights. The result is a higher-contrast image.


• Gold Reflector - Light takes on the color of what it bounces off of. The favorite of photographers shooting bikini-clad bodies on the beach, a gold reflector will warm up an image giving skin tones the Bay Watch look. (Or add warm light to the bouquet of flowers on your dinning room table>) Tip: You can also use a gold reflector as an out-of-focus background for portraits.


• Black Reflector - Taking away light is just as important as adding light. A black reflector can be used to make one side of the face in a portrait darker. It can also remove reflections.


• Translucent Fabric - Do you want really soft light? The bigger your light source, the softer your light. Holding the translucent disc is one way to do it. You can also shot through it with an off-camera flash.

All of the above equally apply to still-life and food photography as well. The reflector collapses to 1/3 of its size and slips into a carrying case. It's light and easy to take with you.

At only $40.00, it's a great value and something that you will use often and for a very long time. However, if you can not afford one now, then go pickup some white, silver, gold, and black pieces of flexible poster board and/or rigid foam core. In a limited way they can serve the same purpose (other than shooting through them of course!). All pro photographers that I know of will still supplement their lighting gear, including reflectors, with basic white and black foam core as necessary.

You can follow this link to buy it from B&H: Westcott 5-in-1 Reflector.

Or buy it from Amazon here:

Book Review of The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes by Joe McNally

Joe McNally's The Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes is one of the most in-depth technical how-to books on photography I have ever read.

Simply put, if you shoot with Nikon flashes you MUST buy this book. (Nearly all of it is applicable to other manufacturer's flashes as well.) This book is not a manual. You can not find this material in the manuals. I know. I've read them. As for other books aimed at small flashes, there are a tiny hand-full that are uniformly unenlightening (pun intended).

The double-truck on pages 6 and 7 is a photo of Joe's flash equipment. I count 16 flashes, but I could have missed one or two! I can think of some extremely great photographers who are currently shooting predominately with the Nikon flash system, but I do not know of any photography who has shot as extensively with Nikon flashes and for as many years with them as Joe has (and who has the extraordinary images to prove it). Now, what if someone like Joe were to do a brain dump and spill EVERYTHING he knows about shooting with small flashes? Well, that is what is in the book.

Besides the technical tips and equipment info, one of the things I like most about the Hot Shoe Diaries is that it has reassured me that different things I have been doing, or simply guessed at, are indeed the right choices to make. Since a lot of the information presented in the book simply has not been out there in the past, I have had to guess my way through some things. The popularity of Strobist has made this book possible, which Joe fully acknowledges, by creating the market for it, but even with all of the information on Strobist I still have been left feeling "un-assured". For me, this book has really reinforced my thought process when it comes to lighting setups and how to get from step one to the end goal of pre-visualized image.

As Joe best sums it up himself:

This is not a book of certainties. It is not a manual. It is, as the title states, a diary. It is an ongoing account of adventures and misadventures, of accidents--happy and otherwise--and of successes and failures. It is an irreverent (go figure) brain dump of accumulated knowledge, much of it hard won in the school of hard knocks, bad bonces, lousy exposures, and misguided notions

While I have highlighted the book extensively (hence, the five-highlighter rating at the top of this review), the best nod I can give any book is whether I will spend the time to read it twice. With this book, I will. Then I expect to use it as a reference for awhile and eventually read it cover-to-cover a third time.

Buy it now:


Click the link for a review of Joe's last book, The Moment It Clicks.

Business Man Superhero

I recently shot some engagement photos for some friends. After the "lovey-dovey" shots were in the bag, the light-spirited groom-to-be burst into his SUPERHERO! pose:

Business man superhero

For the photographers out there, the key light was a 3/4 CTO-gelled strobe bounced on a black/silver umbrella about 7 foot high. The fill was a 1/4 CTO-gelled strobe shot through a shoot-through umbrella about 5 foot high, parallel to the floor, on the left. The background light was a very hot, literally, continuous tungsten light. It's actually on old GE movie light that I rarely use.

All images are Copyright Terry Smith, 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook

Strobist blog readers all know about the use of color correcting gels to convert flash output to tungsten light, florescent light, or any other color. The extreme popularity of the Strobist blog and David Hobby's tip to use gels out of the Rosco sample packs, which can often be had for free and happen to be almost the same size as a flash head, has caused a run on the sample packs. Most camera stores are out of them. Just yesterday I was trying to find some myself in order to replace the gels I've been using. I checked several online stores, even those I prefer not to shop with, and everyone was out of them!

Luckily though, I've just got an email from B&H stating they have some back in stock!

You can find them here:
Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook - 1.75 x 2.75"

They sell for $0.01 each! But with a quantity limit of 2 per order unfortunately.

Plus, if you are a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) you always get FREE 3-5 business days UPS shipping! NAPP members get a GREAT magazine (I struggle to read all of it each month) plus tons of other great perks. I find the free shipping from B&H nearly, if not entirely, pays for my NAPP membership each year.

In full disclosure, I added another item to my B&H order so I can not 100% guarantee you can order two sample packs with free shipping and only pay $0.02, but I believe it is possible.

Update 4/22/2009 - I have ordered more of these with a recent order and can verify that the limit is still 2 per order.

Update 8/18/2009 - Looks like B&H recently raised their price from $0.01 each to $2.00 each, a 200x increase! There doesn't appear to be a limit of 2 restriction any more though. They are $3.95 each at Adorama, so I guess this is still a "deal". They are certainly worth $2.00 each if you do any amount of small flash photography.

Strobist Lighting Seminar Review

2008 has definitely been "The Year of Strobist" for the photography community. Many of us, and hopefully you too, were regular readers of the Strobist blog before the beginning of 2008, but this year David Hobby's blog has definitely taken off. The blog was mentioned in USA Today a few months back, and if that wasn't enough photography blog after photography blog pointed out the fact that Strobist was in USA Today. Giving him even more traffic! And deservedly so.

This year David Hobby launched the Strobist Lighting Seminar set of tutorial DVDs. The first batch of 1,000 (low because David funded it out of his own pocket so I've heard) sold out very quick. I thought my order was in that first batch, but I barely missed it and had to wait a few weeks for the second batch to come in. (My boss here at Terry Smith Images (myself) doesn't like me to waste training-budget money on rush shipping.)

The Strobist Lighting Seminar is 8 DVDs for $139.00. I paid $143.80 which included the cheapest, US Postal Service mailing option.

Is it worth it?

YES

These DVDs are worth every single penny. If you are serious about learning more about lighting you really need to buy these DVDs. There is an amazing amount of material here.

I've read and watched a lot of photography training material over 10+ years of seriously studying the art and craft and in these DVDs David is sharing a TON of information and "first-hand, real-world secrets" that I have never seen anywhere else.

I'm not going to do an extremely in-depth review here. I'm sure other bloggers have done that already. I will summarize the set by saying the first DVD is about Lighting Gear for Beginners, the next four DVDs are recordings of one of this lecture workshops (two for the morning session and two for the afternoon session), and the next three are all live photo shoots.

The decision factor is this: You are not going to get better value anywhere for the amount of instruction versus cost as contained in this DVD set. Any class, workshop, and conference given by someone with his level of expertise would cost much, much more.

Click here for more info on purchasing the DVDs:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2008/05/now-available-strobist-lighting-dvds.html


Here's a executive portrait I shot "strobist-style" recently using wireless off-camera flash. In this case an SB-600 was in the back to light the copper wall and an SB-800 with a CTO gel was to camera-right shot through a white shoot-through umbrella. Some window daylight was let in as well to warm the scene up a bit more. I was working very quickly, and in hind-sight this definitely could be improved. Some front-fill from just a large white card or reflector to camera-left would have added some needed fill to the face.


UPDATE 04/21/2009 - As a complement to these DVDs, I HIGHLY recommended The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. Click here for my review.

All images are Copyright Terry Smith, 2008. All Rights Reserved.