Lighting Reviews

If Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate were graduating from photo school this year, the advice he would be getting instead of “plastics” would be “speedlights,” and why not? When compared to a monolight, the biggest advantage of using a shoe-mount flash is that they’re small and portable, which means you can take them anywhere. Today’s shoe-mount flashes—or speedlights as camera manufacturers like to call them—are sophisticated, seamlessly blending natural light and flash as well as having the ability to group several flashes together, trip them wirelessly, all the while calculating the correct exposure.

Photography is all about light and photographers are always looking at ways to modify it. Visit any studio of a working pro and you’re bound to see softboxes, umbrellas, cones, snoots, grids, beauty dishes, parabolic reflectors, etc. Each has their purpose in changing the shape and/or character of the light. Using the same light source, you can modify it from a sharp, harsh, point light source with distinct shadows to a soft, even light source with very little or no shadows. With that in mind I decided to give one of these modifiers a test, the Paul C. Buff PLM v.2.

I’m not an equipment snob. That applies to both cameras and lighting gear. I’ve always believed that it’s that gray matter in back of your eyeball that determines whether or not you get a decent image, not the price tag on your gear. I like fast lenses and dislike variable apertures, so I pay for them. With lighting equipment, higher prices usually mean more power, more features and flexibility, and better construction. With that in mind, let’s see what the very reasonably priced Genesis 300 B monolight ($399 with battery) from Calumet offers.

Every manufacturer has a slightly different take on how to do it and David Honl has come up with his own original solutions in the form of some nifty and very portable light shapers that fit practically any shoe-mount flash without recourse to special adapters.

Interfit Photographic has introduced Strobies, a system approach to shoe-mount flash accessories. Strobies are designed to take many popular shoe-mount flashes and turn them into versatile lighting tools for studio and location use.

New fluorescent and LED “cool” lights are on the scene, making serious headway into the realm of digital photography. Cool lights not only save energy, but they may be better suited in a variety of situations.

The Mini/Max family consists of two light banks that fit on the front of your shoe-mount flash.