As regular readers of this blog will know by now, I’ve decided to use my older DSLR – and only that – for a whole month again. But of course it would be unfair to use it only with ambient light. First, the two zoom lenses it came with are of a variable aperture type (f/3.5 to 5.6 and f/4 to 5.6), and so they have a huge disadvantage when compared with my fixed focal length “prime” lenses which I normally use on my mirror-free “Pen” camera (they have maximum apertures of f/2.5, f/1.4 and f/1.8). Second, even with these I use flash indoors quite often, since it simply gives much better colours than whatever “available” room light there might be. So last evening I took a shot of some berries which Mitchie bought, using my studio strobe with a beauty dish attached to its front:
Berries. Olympus E-520 with 14-42mm lens at 42mm, studio strobe.
To give you an idea of what that “strobe” (= flash) looks like, here it is, taken with “uncorrected” room light:
Studio strobe with beauty dish. Olympus E-520 with 14-42mm lens at 21mm. ISO400 with +0.5EV correction during the raw conversion with Olympus Viewer 3.
That’s a Simock E300 strobe with a Jinbei 20″ beauty dish attached which also comes with some nice add-ons like a grid and a “sock” which you see here. The strobe itself can be bought as a kit with a light stand and a 36″ Octabox for around €200, which is an incredible value for the money (cheaper than most on-camera TTL flashes, and much more powerful than those, also giving nicer and softer light). Dangling from behind the flash you also see a Yongnuo CTR-301P radio remote which I use for triggering, and which is also cheap and works flawlessly since years. Highly recommended stuff if you’re on a budget and still want good light.
Oh, and because someone asked on Flickr: yes, I’ve tried one of those berries by now, and yes, they taste really nice.
Thanks for reading.
Most people have their equipment priorities in reverse – they always focus on cameras and lenses. 200 Euro spent on lighting gear will have a much bigger impact on their images than brand x camera versus brand y!
How true Laurence, and in fact that was one of the earliest tips I’ve got in the DPReview forums (forae). However, in that stage of own development I didn’t understand it; my mind was in a “how many f-stop advantages” mode at that time, totally neglecting other things like trading in speed for depth of field, or not gaining much in regard to color.
Thanks for reading and commenting!