I have been wanting to bring out my studio lights for a long time to do day for night shots. The cost has been prohibitive as portable systems from Elinchrom or Profoto cost S$3,000 and above and the lights are specific to the battery pack. The nice thing about this little shoot is that I spent S$494(item plus freight) on new equipment do to it! I bought a portable power supply from Innovatronix and used normal mono blocks to do the shoot!
The upsides of this little battery pack are:
1. It is cheap compared to the branded stuff
2. It is light compared to the profoto and elinchrom systems
3. You can use most brands of studio flash up to 1200ws with this battery pack. The pack supports 2 lights but the suggested combined output is 1200ws. For the branded battery packs, you have the same power output limitations but you are limited to specific flash heads.
The downsides are:
1. The recycle time is relatively longer than the branded stuff.
2. The branded stuff usually has more control.
This little baby gives a fantastic price to performance ratio if you already own mono blocks. I am eagerly thinking up a decent test for this piece of kit. :)
Thanks to Betty for lending me her Profoto lights for this shoot. Thanks to Jeremy and Kheng Ju for being my fantastic models. :)
The shoot was done at 5pm when the sun was still relatively bright.
7 comments:
as "sua ku" as i might sound. i always thought to get the "night" kind of feeling in the photo you had to use some sort of a polariser.the results look lovely
allo Heng!
thank you for the helpfull tip. how long did it take to get to u? i'm doing studio shots now and was wondering how am i ever going to afford to buy the batt. pack. from the product picture, i can see there's only 2 sockets rite. i like your work!!!!!
Hi stranger, :)
That is what my blog is about, the photographic journey. I don't like talking equipment that much but I do if it helps me achieve a look that I am searching form.
It took about a week for them to ship the battery and it arrived the next day after they dispatched it. Yes, only 2 sockets. I am considering buying a second pack when I return from my sabbatical.
Appreciate your compliment. Keep dropping by. Thanks.
Heng
Heng, I really like your blog. Your photos are very good, something that I can learn alot from.
I have just started doing studio shots. This is my latest work:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waynemethod/sets/1603172/
I started photography around 4.5 months ago, and since has invested more than $10k in equipments. Now I am hooked on studio shots. I am looking into buying equipments (lighting, portable battery, softbox, etc. to bring outdoor to do my shooting. Any recommendation where should I start?
Hi Wayne,
Your work on flickr is pretty good for someone who just started studio lighting. The thing is that I hope that you actually set up the lights. This is important to understanding how they work.
What I see are what I call passport photos. Nothing wrong with that at all but there is a lot to explore from there. Most of the time the lighting you use is general and bright. But 3D images are created by a play of light and shadows and the greys in-between. Hint: You do not have to point a light box directly at the subject from the sunlight position. :)
If you are going to buy studio lights, don't stinge. Go for Elinchroms or Bowens. There are other good brands but these 2 brands get support in Singapore.
If you want to take your lights out, the tronix explorer mentioned on my blog is a very decent piece of kit, especially for a part time photographer. Some pros may need a faster recycle time.
Heng,
thank you so much for your reply. I think you are too kind with your words to me. Those setup in my studio shots were done jointly by my friends and I. For my son pictures, I set them up myself. But as you can see, that is a rather standard one; I am still trying to learn to be more creative.
It is so wonderful to have found your blog.
Hi. This weekend I had been doing pretty much the same type of lighting with a freind of mine, using the tronix explorer and profoto Compacts. It really is a great piece of equipment.
Anyway, With the tronix, even though it only has 2 outlets, you can easily attach a "triple outlet extension" (don't know the correct term in english - sorry). You'll end up with for outlets.and its a good way to extende flahs distances.
have fun!
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