Lighting

Q: I want to get into commercial (stock) photography. need a good reliable studio/portable lighting. What is your recommendation? I’m leaning to Bowens gemini 500 pro. Profoto D1 better and worth the cost? — Shervin

A: There are a lot of great choices on the market. I’ve used Profoto for years mostly because of their vast array of light modifiers (reflectors, grids and umbrellas) allow you to really shape the light. Profoto D1 are a good choice as are Profoto Acutes. I love the Acute B battery packs when there’s no place to plug in. That said, Bowens offers quite a bang for the buck. You might also check out Paul Bluff’s Einstein 640 strobes that made American Photo’s list of ’12 Tools that Changed the Rules.’ Remember, the most important thing is not what light you use, but how you use it. So to get the most out of them, learn what your lights can do.

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Tagged as: flash photography, Lighting

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One of the cool things I came across at this year’s PhotoPlus Expo was this Interfit Strobies Portrait Kit light modifiers for shoe mount flash. The great thing about studio flashes like Profoto is that you have lots of great choices of light modifiers, but most of the modifiers for on-camera flash either look like a Tupperware jar jammed on the end of the flash or are the some form of white card taped to the back of the flash for bounce. Neither option provides for particularly sexy light. The cool thing about Strobies is that somebody finally figured out a way to shrink light modifiers down to size. The kit sells for about $150 or you can buy most of the modifiers indivually for about $30 each. Flex mounts are available for most any kind of shoe mount flash are another seven bucks. The Sony HLV-58AM uses Flex mount SGM400. If you have several brands of flashes, you just buy an extra $7 adapter.