Lighting News

Phew, what a busy month it’s been for new photo gear! While the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has not, traditionally, been a major event to debut high-end photography equipment, CES 2016 was definitely an exception with dozens of interesting imaging releases. (And hopefully this is a trend that continues at future CES events, which, in recent years have been rather ho-hum for photography gear.)

Along with big ticket items such as the Nikon D5 and D500 DSLRs, along with the new Nikon KeyMission 360 action camera, Nikon also unveiled a new flash at the CES 2016 show today: the Nikon SB-500 Speedlight.

In a short press announcement this morning, Nikon said it's developing a forthcoming full frame (aka FX-format) professional DSLR called the Nikon D5. The D5 would be the follow-up to the 16-megapixel full frame Nikon D4S, which was announced in February 2014.

When I realized that this column would be in the magazine’s lighting focus issue, I looked at the data for the photos I’d taken earlier this year during a nearly month-long combination of safari workshop, assignment, and stock shoot in Africa. What I found surprised me: I’d used flash on about one-third of the 13,000 photos I’d made on that trip. I had no idea I’d used my Speedlights as often as I had.

Studio lighting hardware is going through the biggest change—a paradigm shift, really—since the flashbulb was invented in 1929. There are many trends and fads with LED’s popularity seemingly having equal parts of both. LED lighting also appeals to DSLR and mirrorless camera shooters who want to capture stills and video.

If you read our story on "7 Reasons You Still Need a Flash Bracket for Photography," perhaps you’ve decided it’s time to purchase one of these photography workhorses. Here are our recommendations for 8 Great Flash Brackets to help you achieve studio-quality lighting on the fly.

Portrait photographers get to practice their craft with an amazing selection of different light sources, including everything from hot and cold continuous lighting to power pack-and-head and monolight flash systems to speedlights. Each has its own unique advantages and disadvantages depending on the kind of work you do but when it comes to flash, I’ve always been partial to monolights because of their built-in power supply. I’ve had a monolight fail on a job before but because the other monolights on hand had their own power supply, I was able to complete the assignment.