flash bang wallop

[big paul]

i was using Nikon speed lights for studio work with some success ,but with no modeling light it was a bit hit and miss i have been buying some studio flashes from ebay i have now got 2 courtenay solaflash 2000 and 1 courtenay solaflash 1250 heads 2 soft boxes spill kills honeycombs and umbrellas i am getting good results so fare and for around £200 pounds spent on the gear, i feel thats value for money ,,and when setting up the lights the modeling lights come into there own i just switch the room lights off or close the curtains and set the lights exactly where i want them,it would be nice to have the top of the market gear but the price is just stupid and unless i was earning a living from them a waste of money that i could not afford,then all i add to it is a camera and a roll of FP4,and the magic begins..........oh and someone to sit for me thats the hardest part.....


www.essexcockney.com

[JOReynolds]

I use an Elinchrom kit for photographing flat artwork under standardised conditions. It is beyond reproach. I needed a second set and, rather than opt for secondhand, I chose a Chinese kit at less than half the price, marketed by Interfit. The heads are about 1 1/2 stops less bright than the Elinchrom, roughly in proportion to the declared power in watt-seconds. But there are anomalies which I cannot explain.
If I vary the power when shooting slides, I have to meter the brightness several times while the capacitors 'settle' to their new setting. I include a grey-scale in the frame out of habit and I note that, on lower brightness settings, the image is slightly pink. Is that the film (Fujichrome Velvia 100) responding to a change in flash duration?

[robinb]

Flash gear can be crazily expensive for the new top of the line stuff
I use rental Broncolor profesionally which is about £9000 for one pack and head
we had 18 lights on Friday ...

But for my own large format work I use the former Rolls Royce of flash
made by Strobe of London
this was also very very expensive and only really available to top advertising photographers but is now very cheap as they have mostly gone digital and need other things

its only faults are that it is heavy and very bright if you are shooting at a high asa
I mostly do 8x10 and 5x4 portaits and it is perfect for that
I have units built in the 1960s which I've had for 20 years and have yet to fail
and some newer stuff from early 2000s made by a company called Strobex that was ex employees of strobe set up when the owner passed away

it looks old fashioned because it is
but there was a time when the best things were built to last

robin

[big paul]

hi robin the flashes i have are big bulky and don't whistle when they are ready and the modeling light stays on when the flash fires ,they have two settings half and full and modelling light has on and off ,,,A on light and a light to tell when they are ready ,they recycle in seconds ,and the most important, i like to use them ,they are made out of metal and look like they will last .what i have done is bought some new modeling lights they are screw in and modern shape .i have taken some nice portrait shots with them and they are great to learn on .
i am only a amature and like to spend my money wisely and carefully on my hobby at the end of the day its film paper and chemicals that come first and a camera ,everything else comes second .but i was struggling with speed lights indoors (they are great as fill in out doors) and now i have the power and modeling lights so i am happy


www.essexcockney.com

[JOReynolds]

... I use the former Rolls Royce of flash
made by Strobe of London
I worked for Adrian Flowers' studio in the sixties and he had several 'suitcases' and two 5000joule 'pianos', full of racks of Bosch jar capacitors. His favourite lamp would nowadays be called a softbox. It connected to both pianos, had seven five-foot fluorescent tubes for modelling and six flash tubes of the same length. The extra-bright modelling lamps were necessary because the aperture was typically f/45 for 8x10" Ektachrome with a 480mm lens and focussing any wider was irrelevant. I think it was our cleaning lady, Mrs Wines, who sewed up a darkcloth with a drawstring and a light-trap to allow airflow. It was sometimes my task to count the 'bangs'. There was one job, jewellery as I recollect, that required sixteen bangs at f/90 to get the depth of focus - bellows extension makes a big difference. We used boxes and boxes of 5x4" 50 asa Polaroid for exposure setting.
Mrs Wines and her friends, by the way, sewed together yards and yards of Italian black velvet to make one of the back-drops in '2001: a Space Odyssey'. It was carefully steamed on hanging. Some scenes had multiple exposures on 70mm film and it was important to avoid flare and retain the dense black background.