Off camera flash or strobe unit

[jcuknz]

The advice on this thread is both excellent and very poor ... WHY? One one thing Chauncey has survived till now without a flash and says he doesn't have much money [ though only he knows what that means ]
So on another thread [ Smoke ] I suggested an cheap way of getting smoke photos if he follows the positioning advice of experienced workers like Grumpy etc which I also learnt from not having tried smoke photos to date.

But sadly he now asks what flash should he buy and in come the experts with top rate answers if Chauncey is a professional using flash all the time but pretty useless or misleading if he is just going to use flash occasionally [ unless he has money to burn ] ....I have accumulated around ten flash units and three/four/five stands over the years and they simply do not get used because these days I find the much despised on-board answers my needs. OK my 'model' model was not smoke or droplets but the same gear would likely suffice for the hummingbird if they lived in my area ... the advantage of the Youngnuo is its adjustable output but as output goes down for shorter duration so is the likelihood of ambient light being strong enough to spoil the result. Likewise it is obvious to me that if you reduce the power of the 'studio flash' unit the pilot light which being low out put is also at a warmer colour temperature UNLESS it goes out when the flash is fired .... never used a studio flash so I don't know but it is something to check for.
But there is another aspect ... one of the useful and not so is the characteristic of light from a source falls off or increases at the inverse square of the distance of flash to subject [ not camera to subject ] ... this was a pain when I photographed wedding cakes at weddings [ no studio of course just me and the flash on location ] and even using 100ASA/ISO film with a Guide number of 56 I was over exposing even at f/22 ... that was the bad side ... the good side is when you are able to keep the flash close to the subject as with smoke or droplets and trigger it with the 'masked on-board' and because of the small flash to subject distance the aperture is also small. So while GN30 or GN56 is pitiful for a portrait where one probably want to have a diffusing screen it is fine for the subjects suggested.

Using the masked on-board also saves the expense of trigger systems which can be cheap or expensive. My suggestion of separate slave triggers is 'old technology' even for me now I have my Youngnuo's with their rotating heads which let you point the body at the camera and the head at the subject .... just like the expensive flash units whose expense is not warranted for somebody who uses available light or continuous most of the time. Unless he thinks he should do it because everybody else is

A side note on my model 'model' photo ... I deliberately kept my flash back at a distance suitable for a human being instead of going in close if I needed a more powerful light. f/11 at five feet with 100 ISO ... so if you do not diffuse even a small flash gives a useful amount of light.

[Manfred M]

I'm going to have to take back some of my suggestions.

When I clicked on Chauncey's link it opened up to the Amazon site and I based my costs on that.

What I hadn't noticed is that the link was the Amazon.ca site. When I forced the Amazon.com site, it seems that the Canadian price is over 10x higher than the USA price; $98.95US versus $1237.36CAD. Currently the $CAD = $0.80US.

My thoughts were based on the wrong price; I wonder how the Amazon currency conversion engine can be so far off?

http://www.amazon.ca/StudioPRO-Monol...ts+photography

[jcuknz]

One of my problems is that I am a DIYer so my choices are based on my skills, limited in my mind by the knowledge of what friends and acquaintances do.
But I would mention that in the privacy of my own home I have used a broom tied to a chair as a light stand ... my original continuous lights purchased around 60 years ago were reflectors mounted on a clip to attach to doors, chairs and in the need for more light in pre-flash days and movies i doubled up on each one using a pair of 'Photofloods' rather than a single bulb.
Different time, different needs, and different solutions, but some solutions are adaptable to today when money is not in abundance...

Manfred's problem ... I prefer to have prices in US$ which one usually gets when on Ebay one clics to see the vender and then do my own conversion if I am seriously interested.

[rpcrowe]

Chauncey...

I just checked that you live in the USA which makes recommendations a bit easier since we can use eBay USA for aa reference...

Look under Camera and Photo > Lighting and Studio > Flash Lighting and then select > used....

That will eliminate the cheaper Chinese lights and you can concentrate on used name brand lights...

An example of a very decent light at a relatively low price is the Calumet 450W/s monolight:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Calumet-Gene...item4d2da82252

Other quite decent used monolights are the Paul C. Buff white Lightning and.or Alien Bee models

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Flash-Lighti...+c+buff&_frs=1

BTW: I have been using a pair of original Paul C. Buff White Lightning WL 500 units for 20 years and I paid $50 each for them. Pro-rated, that is just a few pennies a day. This unit is the more powerful WL 10,000 unit with barn doors and Speedring. These old units are like the Energizer Bunny, they just keep going and going. Paul C. Buff still sells parts such as flash tubes.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/Flash-Lighti...+c+buff&_frs=1

The lighting with these units "AIN'T ALL THAT BAD EITHER"







If I needed an relatively inexpensive light, I would not hesitate to get this unit...

[xpatUSA]

Must say thanks for this thread which inspired me to try to trigger two off-cam flashes from a Sigma SD14.

I thought that their wireless system would do it, but no. You can only set one wireless channel out from the cam and the two off-cam units can not respond to the camera at same time (peer-to-peer connection, IIRC). Translation: the bloody things didn't flash

Besides which, after reading the inscrutable instructions a couple of times, the wireless bit only syncs the settings 'twixt camera and remote unit - totally not required for he who sets everything manually and never asks for directions. In other words, even in wireless mode, it's the on-camera flash that does the triggering.

So it is that their "Normal Slave" mode does the job well enough and I've just shot three satisfyingly bright spots reflected off the living room wall. One giant stride for me . . . a tiny step for most, I imagine.

[chauncey]

Appreciate that heads up Richard...will keep it in mind.