Just bought another studio strobe, which arrived today. So of course I had to test it right away:
Tuna the cat, November 2014
I took this with the new strobe bounced over the wall and ceiling across the room, from between our bookshelf and the entrance. The flash was set to 1/4 of its maximum power output (of 300Ws), which gave me an aperture of f/2.8 on the sofa where the cat was dozing. I left the modeling light off for this one, and the photo above is as good as straight out of camera.
Here’s a photo of the new device:
N8fang Simock Mythos E300 studio strobe
For this photo taken with the same aperture and without flash, I had to use 1/1.3rd of a second (at ISO 200), and my tripod. Ok for a static object like this, but for anything which moves and breathes, I’d take the flash at 1/160th of a second instead.
In my opinion it’s the best thing you can buy to improve your indoor (and with a generator, even your outdoor) shots. You can even mix flash with daylight without any filtering tricks – just turn to strobist.com for advice on how to do that.
A studio strobe like this one is way cheaper than your typical camera makers’ TTL flash – I bought my first one together with a 36″ Octabox and a light stand for under 200€ new at N8fang, and I wrote a long-term review of it on/for the Lighting Rumors site. Just in case you’re interested, I receive nothing for recommending it.
Update, from about half past 6 in the evening:
Here’s another one of Tuna – this time with two strobes:
Tuna the studio cat
Another update, from short past 7pm:
Here’s another photo for which I used both studio strobes, and this time the PanaLeica 25mm lens. In this case, the second strobe provided some kind of room lighting for the background, which would otherwise have gone almost completely black:
Mouth piece and valve oil, again
As you can see, having more than one light can be really useful to include things like a background, or to set accents or whatever. By far the most popular use of two lights would be some kind of clamshell lighting, either from above and below or angled up to 180 degrees from each other – that is what you see in your TV series each day (usually with some more lights to simulate windows or whatever).
But even one light, even a compact flash like our sub 40€ Yongnuo YN-460II ones will really help in getting better colours, contrast, and even sharpness. Especially in the dark season which lies ahead. Much more important than what kind of camera you’re using.
Here’s an image – one last one for today – which I took using only one of these lights:
Leaf. Olympus E-520 with 50mm macro lens.
Thanks for reading.