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Wednesday, March 17, 2010 | photography |
Can you replicate the look of studio pro photography with just a small speedlight and some other cheap portable equipment? If you want to know how, read on.
Strobism is a new word that means professional photography lighting without using cumbersome studio equipment. The Strobist blog really started a new trend in photography demonstrating that with smart thinking and the right equipment you can use small speedlights in many occasions when in the past a photographer had to resort to expensive and heavy gear.
Still in my opinion there was still a drawback: I had to duplicate most of my equipment because all the light modifiers that I used with my studio flashes weren't compatible with the systems available for speedlights. These meant I would had to buy another set of softboxes, snoot, beautydish, etc... All considered it was a huge expense and still some of the options I had for my studio flashes was missing once I would have decided to work with speedlights, and I'm not just talking about power.
Then in these last months some very smart adapter were released. They allow to use S-bayonet (the standard mount used by Bowens and also adopted by a lot of other flash lighting manufacturers) accessories with my light and practical speedlights.
I bought one of these adapters using eBay from this seller so to test how robust and practical it could be and I soon felt in love with it. The adapter is pretty rugged and robust, it's also smart designed so you can safely fix a speedlight using its hot shoe but with also the option to remove the hot shoe adapter and use a standard spigot: very handy in case you use some remote controllers as I usually do.
The S-bayonet adapter is a sturdy ring which can easily allow to mount large softboxes, even if I used at maximum 40x40" sized ones as I fear that my speedlights wouldn't be powerful enough to provide even illumination with anything larger.
But you can also used snoots, small and medium beauty dishes and so on... practically I can use all the studio equipment I already own (as also my studio flashes have the Bowens S-bayonet) plus I could use every new accessory I will buy.
After some testing I soon ordered other 2 adapters so that using a single, handy carry-bag I could bring on location 3 speedlights, with their tripods, a couple of softboxes, a snoot, a beauty-dish and have plenty of power for most of the shots without having to rent a battery pack, its heads and a van to transport all that cumbersome stuff.
Of course if you have to shoot 3-4 people together or you want to heavily overpower summer sun at noon you still have to resort to more powerful equipment but this solution is perfect if you want to make some portraiture on location, maybe at your customer's home, or shoot some food in a restaurant without having to transform it in a studio.
For example this portrait of ugly-me has been shot using a Nikon sb26 in a 24"x24" softbox at 1/8 power and another sb26 as hair light at 1/4 power.
(Alessandro Guerani is a professional photographer specialized in food shooting. He lives in Bologna, Italy, and is available for assignments to create the images you always craved. Read the "About me" or contact him using the "Mail me" in the blog menu above.)
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