After we were fortunate enough to catch the assignment to shoot Tuck and Patti for InMenlo, we began hankering for a portable lighting setup, like the one we rented to shoot monsieur and madame.
The usual traveling one-light setup consists of a monobloc (an integrated power supply and strobe/modeling light), an umbrella or softbox, a light stand sufficiently robust to support the usual, ruggedly-built 200 or 400 watt-second device and all the small stuff – cords, flash meter, sand bags, gobos, grip gear, cameras et al. etc.
Needless to say, it took me about a half hour to set up, and bless ‘em, Tuck and Patti were completely understanding, but that’s not going to often work for me or most of the time-pressed people I’m likely to shoot these days. I’m slow enough getting in to their office, as it is.
So I’ve been trying to think of a very lightweight, easy to set light that I could handily take along to assignments. One of the (nice) dirty secrets of the latest-gen digital cameras is that their noise (aka ‘grain’) figures are very low. One needed to tote serious power in order to reliably get a decent f-stop on Ektachrome 100 – not so, these days. Modern DSLRS have image quality at ISO 400 (DX-format) and even ISO 1600 (full 35mm frame format) that one was reserved for fine-grain transparency film.
Indeed, AA-battery powered strobes will provide sufficient light for many applications, particularly when a 460-pixel-wide image is the target medium. So we’ve been web-surfing, cruising the product offerings, and come to see I’m about the last photographer to notice this datum. There are a ton of relatively inexpensive products available to make a cheap, portable light source, a number of which I snapped up at Keeble & Shucat this morning.
Anyway, we’ve come away with a very light, relatively easy-to-set-up thing we call the ‘light stick,’ basically a modern version of the light 1930’s photogs christened the ‘bare bulb.’ We used it today, but I’ve promised InMenlo not to publish the photo before they do. Short take… I like it…
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Very cool! I’ll look forward to the photo and more info about the light setup.
Hmmm. Buy essays? Spam Blocker hiccup?
Seen http://strobist.blogspot.com/ ?
Seems good on lighting.