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Monday, April 11, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Extreme •People, Personalities, Interviews •Sports •Stock •Travel •Products •Lighting •

Travel lighting kit

Tom Bol | 04/11

The Elinchrom Quadra makes a great travel lighting option.

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I often get asked how I carry my lighting gear on shoots, and what gear I use.  This is a big question, with lots of answers.  The simplest way to deal with airlines and portability is use speedlights.  Today there are more accessories than ever for speedlights, and you can create some incredible images using these handy flashes.  Weighing in at a pound with AA batteries installed, speedlights are the ultimate lightweight option you can carry onto the plane with you.  But what if you want more power, more lighting modifiers (larger) and quicker recycle times for those portrait sessions?  That is where the Elinchrom Quadra does a fantastic job of finding the middle ground between speedlights and large studio strobe packs.

A real concern traveling with studio gear is getting it through the airport security.  If you check your lighting equipment, you are trusting that it will make it through TSA screening (we have all heard horror stories).  Generally speaking, if you put a note about the battery type, battery documentation for your strobe pack, and note that it confirms to IATA regulations, you shouldn’t have any problems. I also include a copy of the users manual for more documentation.  I’ve traveled extensively using the larger Elinchrom Ranger and have not had problems, but my gear gets checked every time.  With the Elinchrom Quadras, I am able to carry these 400 watt units right onto the plane with me.  Sometimes security asks to see the units, other times they don’t.  I have traveled from Alaska to Mongolia carrying Quadras and never had problems.  The Quadras use a sealed lead acid battery, not lithium, and you can pull a fuse from the battery to make it even safer for travel.  This satisfies the TSA folks.  These units work wirelessly using the Elinchrom Skyport system, and with the wide range of softboxes available, I have lots of creative portraiture options.

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Use gels on your flash for special effects.

Tom Bol | 05/11- 05:35 AM

Adding gels to your flash and changing white balance creates unique images.

I like to follow this principle.  “The more skills you have, the better your chances for success.”  I used to use this principle as a climbing instructor when teaching students rope systems.  Inevitably on some climb something wouldn’t go right, maybe a simple thing like getting a rope stuck.  The more rescue and climbing systems you knew, the better your chances of having a solution to fix the problem.
The same is true for photographers.  Every photographer has a story about a ‘photo shoot gone bad.’  Strobes don’t fire, talent doesn’t show up, permits aren’t in order.  What separates one photographer from another is how they deal with these situations.  Clients like photographers who have solutions, not problems.  Knowing more technical skills behind the camera also helps.  And one of my favorite things to do is add gels to flash to spice things up.

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Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29- 10:11 AM

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

When most people think of high speed sync, they think fast shutter speeds and freezing the action.  True, shooting at 1/8000 with flash is going to freeze the action no matter what the main light source is illuminating the subject.  But what about other uses of high speed sync and flash.  Until the release of the Pocket Wizard Flex system and Hypersync (see my last post), I was often frustrated shooting in bright sun.  I needed an aperture of F16 to get the right exposure at 1/200, my fastest sync speed using my Elinchrom Rangers.  What if I wanted to use a wide open aperture like F2.8 to get soft focus and blur out the background?  The answer is use high speed sync for selective focus shots in bright, sunny conditions.  Maybe high speed sync should be called ‘soft focus sync.’

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