Speedlight Beauty Dish for the Masses?

The beauty dish is probably up there as an amateur's holy grail of lighting modifiers after they've exhausted the various umbrellas, softboxes, grids and bedsheets.

However the hotshoe speedlight beauty dishes tend to be a very limited for the speedlight/hotshoe market except for David Tejada's infamous plant pot dish or Todd Owyoung's 'chinatown special'. The professional/non DIY beauty dish market for speedlight options is ruled mostly by Kacey and Mola, discounting the no name ebay pans/S mount mods.

But now LumoPro provide their 22" beauty dish offering - how does it fare?

Minolta Flash Meter III: Too Square to be Cool?

The Minolta Flash Meter III was released in the early 1980s and feels very much like it's time but how is it for basic metering?

PocketWizards: Triggering a Remote Camera

This is one of those things that I always have to think twice before getting right, but this is how to remotely trigger your camera AND your lights which are attached to your Pocket Wizards PlusII units.

Numbers: Show Me the Numbers..

I like numbers. Good numbers, like 8, and it's just so that I should get to know some more numbers when using my flashes/light modifiers.

High Speed Sync: Nikon Options (Revisited)

If you've ever needed to kill ambient midday or required to freeze action, then you'll know that insane shutter speeds are your friend. However, less friendly comes when flash is thrown into the mix.

With Nikon bodies and SB units you've got 3 options to acheive high speed sync (HSS) or auto FP sync (as per Nikon literature): CLS, radio triggers and optical slaves.

ISL: its the Law

The inverse square law (ISL) is one of those things that just annoys me as I keep confusing myself after I've learned it. When you look at it, its quite simple.

Hotshoe Action: Apollo vs Ezybox (clone) Comparison

Reasonable hotshoe softboxes only really come in 2 favours - the Westcott Apollo or the Lastolite Ezybox (incl the ebay clones). When I was trying to decide between the two, there wasn't really much consolidated information, so here's the science - Apollo 28" vs Ezybox 60x60cm (24") single diffusion panel clone.

The Apollo has Landed

The Westcott Apollo 28" softbox is a speedlight softbox that I've been aware of for a long time now. Finally, I got myself a copy.

Shooting on White

I don't shoot much against a pure white background, but it's definitely something I should re-familiarise myself with as it gives another dimension for your subjects whether its for high key portraits where high key == happy and youthful so I understand, or for product lighting.



Someone commented that some of my stuff looked like it was lit inside a cave, so lets see how we can get outside.

Metering: Don't Just Point and Shoot

Exposure with strobes in a totally controlled environment and also metering an ambient only scene.

DIY Justin Clamp

As part of my collecting/hoarding mentality I always thought the Manfrotto Justin Clamps (model# 175F) were a cool little tool but the 45GBP price always put me off.

I knew that Manfrotto made a spring clamp (model# 175) that didn't have the ballhead/hotshoe (which seems to be a Manfrotto 492 micro ballhead) so I wondered how easy it would be to be a Justin Stailey (without McNally).

Light meters: A Throw-Back or Is it Worth It?

In answering the Q myself: worth it!!

Recently got myself a(n old Minolta IVF) light meter after a friend at work brought his meter in. And, I've gotta admit, using a meter and hitting an exposure dead on (mostly) first time is kinda addictive.

But, how do we use a light meter exactly?

Strobe at f/what camera left...

"SB unit into softbox, camera left @ f/4" I read. The first time I saw something like that I went and looked at the back of my SB units to see how I could magically punch in f/4. And alas, I was mistaken, and misunderstood as are many newcomers to strobes.

DIY PocketWizard Holder

After being inspired by Rui M Leal's PW holder I was always looking to replicate this for my own Manfrotto 026 umbrella adaptor.

[strobist] Balancing Twilight

This is the same setup as everything else particularly the balancing ambient setup. The only thing that we need to take care of is the rapidly dropping ambient.

[strobist] Balancing the Sun/Crosslighting

The sun during the day can be pretty hard to over power, but you dont need to be fighting this battle. In fact, you can use the sun to your advantage with cross lighting. And what is cross lighting? Its exactly what it sounds like.. you have 2 light sources pointing at each other.

[strobist] Balancing Ambient

Unless you are shooting at the golden hours (just after sunrise and just before sunset) then it will most likely be you will be turning to this technique -- your flash will become the main light for your subject and the ambient becomes fill.

[strobist] 101 in a Nutshell - The Starting Point

Whenever we are balancing for a scene the strobist site recommends the following the same basic strategy for all shots:

• get to max sync
• get correct exposure using aperture

[stobist] Learn it, Learn it now

There aren't many ways to control light using your camera.. you can change shutter, change the aperture and ermm, do both. But thats the great thing - thats it!! With one of these you have control of your lighting situation from camera.

Helping the Recession - PW PlusII

... and now i'm going to be broke for the next 3 months.

After spending a lot of time with my ebay/cactus v2 triggers, I finally decided that the misfires and unreliable nature of these very cheap triggers where enough to make me consider the PWs.

Yes it was painful, but I believe I read somewhere Michael J Fox saying (as he thuds his head off the road in Back to the Future) "pain is temporary, film is forever"