Recent content by Hermes

A bowens speedlite adapter will give you a way to mount your softboxes directly to a light stand. From there you'd just need to bolt a plate to it where the speedlite would normally go and put your (correctly rated) lamp holder through that with a dimmer switch in-line. Should be do-able for...

Shame about the holder. If youre technically minded you could probaby open up the head and replace it but you'd need to bleed the capacitors with a resistor before you touch any of tge circuitry. Seeing as you're only using the modelling light, are there not cheaper solutions than buying a...

Its the second one for me!

If the modelling bulbs are the standard E27 long tube style ones i found when googling the flash head then the outer casing is protective glass so oil/grease shouldnt be an issue. Its only the smaller projector style lamps and the flash tubes themselves that are in danger from...

This.. Also were all the bulbs purchased together / from the same batch?

Never liked sandbags for weighing down stands in the studio as all our stands are on roller bases. I just take a manfrotto g-peso counterweight and clamp it directly to the centre column of any stand that will support an off centre load. Not cheap but neat, sturdy and foolproof.

Taken them through every London airport at one time or another and its never been an issue.

Yeah.. i know i need to get started with it.l its just a big mental process for me learning to work with a new camera as we run so many different types it can get confusing. The face tracking sounds great though!

The trouble with the shallow "parabolic" umbrellas is that the point of focus is quite far away from the face of them making it difficult to get the light close to the subject - either the light head or the feet of the stand end up in the way. You can pull them back but at a distance you may as...

Technically an owner as we've got one still sitting in the box it came in :) Was hoping to do some testing with it over the Xmas break but the free time never turned up. Has anyone done much playing around with the video features yet?

You'll probably find that light from the polished surface looks uneven and a bit spotty with the modelling light but the actual flashtube floods the reflector much more evenly and the light quality ends up fine (except possibly a dead spot in the light output at 6 o'clock where the flashtube has...

All depends on what kind of work you're doing. The one area that seems to be moving at a lightning pace right now is video. In that field, today's entry-level makes the professional equipment from 5 years ago look dated. For sports/action, the top-series DSLRs from a few years back still hold...

I had to talk a friend out of buying a bridge camera a few weeks ago. The quality from some bridge cameras these days is actually pretty impressive. They've generally got plenty of megapixels for normal use, respectable focal-length range on the telephoto end and some have video features /...

It's a nice photo. Don't think there's much you could have done better without a lot more work. He's in shade and wearing glasses so blasting him with direct flash (on or off camera) would have made the shot look a bit artificial (sorry to say, i think the speedlite example you posted above...

Bob. Haven't used that exact one but Elinchrom have an 29 degree ultra-high output reflector (Maxi-Spot) and I seem to remember from my tests a few years back that it added around 2 3/4 stops vs the standard 90 degree reflector for a given distance. I'd expect at least a stop from yours. Of...