[Ed's note: Al had never been in a studio before After about 2 minutes' instruction he was off and running All the pictures on this page are his and apart from the last one are all exactly as shot in camera. I re-edited the last one to show the kind of picture I would expect Al to present from the day.]
I couldn't believe my luck, after a bit of a chat on ThinkCamera I got an email inviting me to a studio where I could play with different lighting gear and take photos of pretty girls as well! Then came the catch, Jonathan wanted me to write a review of the day and the kit. If you don't want to know all the details you'll find a summary of the kit I used at the end of the article.
First of all, who am I? Well I'm a bloke who enjoys taking all kinds of shots from floral work to kids portraits. My own kit consists of a Canon 20D, a small range of lenses and a couple of flash guns along with a pair of reflectors. I am looking to expand the small amount of portrait work that I do and I am considering backgrounds and lighting options. The fact that until the day in the studio I had never been within 50 feet of a studio light has made me very wary of just going ahead and buying such expensive kit.
So, what was the kit? As far as lighting goes there was a Broncolor Mobilite System with 1200W Pico Heads (the lights themselves to the uninitiated like me), a Bowens GM500 travel pack kit which consists of two 500Ws heads plus stands, bag, all the leads you need, softbox and umbrella and a wide angle reflector Peter Davey has added a couple of shoot through brollies, a third head and 3 wireless Quantum remote triggers. Finally we had a pair of Elinchrom Style 400FX heads with shoot through brollies on the front As the name implies these are 400Ws heads There were light meters from Sekonic, a lastolite Triflector and some cameras to try out Finally I tried out using a Canon 580EX flash gun acting as master to a 420EX in the background.
I took a few shots with my 20D connected to the Broncolors to start with to get the hang of having a long wire attached to the camera, it soon became apparent that accidents can and will happen when a bloke with size 11 feet is tethered to a static light stand, more than once I had to catch Jonathan's new pride and joys!
Jonathan then asked me to try a new camera, he offered me the choice of the Canon 400D, a Canon 1Ds MkII or an Olympus E-400 As tempted as I was by the 1Ds MkII, I had heard a lot about Olympus cameras and wanted to see for myself why the magazines seem to mark it down whilst the owners all love them
So with the Olympus E-400 fitted with the kit lens (a little 14-42mm) and a hot shoe adapter for the synch lead I set off to try out the Broncolors again It was at this point I discovered that you have to delve into the cameras menu system to switch on the external flash In fairness to Olympus I was not given the instructions and had to work it out for myself but doing so was fairly intuitive The camera itself is very small in the hand, initially I thought it was built with children in mind but thinking back to my Dad's old OM 10 it felt very familiar The camera and lens are both very lightweight compared to the Canon 20D but once you get over the size it starts to feel like a good choice for taking on holiday or for putting into an overcoat pocket when walking around The controls on top are pretty simple to work out although it took me a few minutes to realise that when in manual I had to press down the exposure compensation button whilst rotating the thumbwheel to adjust the aperture I also found that if I didn't switch off the menus they only cleared momentarily when the shutter release was half pressed. This meant they'd come back on when the camera was up to my eye and I found the reflections in my glasses very tricky to contend with It was a minor gripe but one that cost me a few shots The E-400 will take a compact flash card and an XD card at the same time and when one fills up it will switch to the other automatically, this is a great idea even if like me you don't like XD cards Most importantly the images from the 10Mp camera are as sharp as a tack straight from the camera and I mean sharp. The lens focuses very quickly indeed and rarely hunts even in low light.
Back to the lights, it soon became apparent that the Broncolors are very powerful, to get a narrow depth of field I had to put a diffuser over one head and point the other one in the opposite direction! Any aperture larger than F8 led to massive overexposure, and whilst most portraits are taken at that aperture it didn't suit the shot I wanted
and I had already dialled them down as far as I could so drastic action was needed I could have replaced the lights or moved the model but I wanted to see how the Broncolors could be adjusted without the aid of softboxes or umbrellas. The big thing I learned from these lights was that without the usual light softening and diffusing devices you need to consider bounce and reflectors to get the best from them unless you are trying to illuminate a football pitch!
On then to the Bowens travel kit As I mentioned earlier we had the benefit of a very complete set up here and whilst I watched Peter and David struggle to get the best from the Triflector I noticed that the model was striking a great pose with her legs which was hidden by the Lastolite gear I removed the Triflector and asked her to resume the pose and then set about adjusting the lights I set the softbox to her left, kept the umbrella at high right where I found it and aimed the snoot (long cone that goes on the light) at the background behind the models head A couple of test shots showed me that I needed more light on the models face so I adjusted the softbox, turned the power up on both it and the snoot and then took another reading with the light meter.
I should mention at this stage that I was using the remote trigger system on this kit which fits straight to the camera hotshoe without the need for an adapter This time the light on Emma's face was just right so we set about making sure her feet were in shot, Emma is a very tall girl and was wearing high heels so framing was tight. It wasn't helped by the fact that the viewfinder gives a 95% field of view, once I'd worked out that it is very similar to the Canon 20D in this respect I was soon snapping away again Because the Bowens have a modelling light facility it was very easy to see the effect that any adjustments I made would have on most things Without any initial explanation on how they work I had soon worked out the main controls on these lights for myself which boosted my confidence considerably.
Next was the turn of the Elinchroms With the exception of the built in fan the 400FX lights are practically the same as the D-Lite 4 system (at least it looks that way from the specs on Elinchroms web site) so I was very interested to look at these as the D-Lites are the kind of kit my budget may stretch to Moving them around was very easy, nice light weight heads on fairly stable stands meant they didn't feel ready to tip over as I moved them Both of these lights were fitted with shoot through umbrellas, I have to confess I couldn't really see how that makes the light any different to a soft box or a reflecting umbrella other than giving the ability to change the colour or temperature of the light All of the shots I took with these lights were against a black background so there was no need for a third light Once again these lights offer a high degree of control as you can adjust their power in 1/10th stages. Our space was quite limited and the lights were only three or four feet from the model so 400Ws was pretty excessive, dialling the lights down to about 2.6 to 3 made them behave beautifully and I got the feeling that the 200W heads would have been quite sufficient at this range, possibly making them a good choice for when you have to take your gear into someone's living room I was now back to using a synch lead and rapidly re-learned the tip about keeping the lead under control - much to the models amusement! The next lesson I had to sort was how to get a black coat to show against a black background, after a couple of tries I got the light meter out and took a reading from where Emily's coat lapel was next to her skin, this gave a different reading and made all the difference It was during this shoot that the Olympus insisted on showing me the menu screen as I brought the camera to my eye, the reflections in my glasses made composing the shot practically impossible and it took a while to get the camera to behave, this was as much due to the fact I didn't have the instructions as anything else.
On all the different lighting rigs I used a Sekonic L308 lightmeter. It's a very small and simple meter with a screen on the front, a synch lead port and a couple of buttons for setting synch speed and firing the lights on the side. Using it was very easy and the readings were as accurate as you would expect. I don't know about outdoor use but for the studio shots I was taking it did the job nicely You just have to dial in your shutter speed, press the fire button and read the F value it gives you when it triggers the lights.
Finally I decided to indulge myself and see how my own Heath Robinson lighting gear would fair in a real studio My kit at home presently consists of a white sheet, a couple of reflectors and a pair of flash guns, a Canon 580Ex on camera and an older 420Ex acting as slave to lighten the background behind the subject The 420Ex usually has a diffuser fitted to spread the light evenly and the 580 bounces off the ceiling In a living room and reasonable daylight this rig gives good results after a little help in Photoshop where I blow out the whites and use layer masks to recover the subject but how would it work in a fairly dark studio that did not have a white ceiling? To make up for the lack of convenient ceiling I fitted an omni-bounce to the 580EX and got on with trying a few shots. Frankly the results were disappointing with the 420EX failing to illuminate the fairly large area behind the model properly and there was also quite a strong colour cast from the surrounding room Alarmingly some of the shots taken at ISO 200 show a very high degree of noise which if Canon were to be believed the 20D isn't supposed to suffer from Out of about thirty or so shots I got perhaps five which could be rescued, and of those I would only have shown two to the client The results may have been improved with an additional slave flash but given the cost of three Canon flash guns it makes more sense to invest in a decent set of studio lights.
To summarise
Olympus E-400
I have to stress that I spent the entire day with this camera in manual mode, at ISO 100 and didn't bother to try out any of the features this camera comes with I can however tell you that when in a studio this camera was a lot of fun and gave absolutely superb images when coupled with the 14 - 42mm lens It is hard to judge white balance under circumstances where one is trying out several different lights but it has to be said that the results are all pretty consistent, the pictures from each set of lights are all within 100degs K of each other I did find it difficult at times to half press the shutter release without the shutter firing straight away due to the button having a very light touch This was a minor niggle and by the end of the day I was getting used to that As I said at the start of this article my initial reaction was that it felt like a child's toy, I then thought it felt a little tacky, especially after the bulk and solidity of the 20D For my hands it is too small to use as a main camera but I have to admit that after an hour or so I began to like it - a lot If I am ever in the market for a conveniently small camera and lens combo for holiday or just walking around and being discreet then the £700 street price for this camera and lens kit would make it a definite front runner.
Broncolor Mobilite System
If you want a powerful and consistent set of lights that take up very little room then look no further than these babies For a more in depth review you'll need to look for the opinion of a more qualified photographer, my own experience cannot hope to give them a balanced review.
Bowens Travel Kit
This is a rig for someone who can justify the expense and knows what they are doing Recycle times are fast and the colour balance seemed to be very constant The modelling light made them very user friendly and they offered a very good level of control As mentioned before this kit had been added to extensively making it hard for me as a studio virgin to judge it as sold but I would feel pretty safe in saying that the additional third head made lighting the plain white background far easier than it would have been whilst allowing full shadow control from both sides on the model's face Obviously giving the system remote control removed a major trip hazard with regards to my big feet Would I buy this rig? Only if I had the space for a home studio and knew I would have a steady stream of work to justify the £750 for the two head kit plus the additional head, shoot through brollies, remote controls etc or the £1240 three head kit Sadly I haven't the space or a sufficiently understanding wife, maybe one day...
Elinchrom 400FX
As you would expect from a pair of lights that come with a similar price tag to the Bowens kit it performs equally as well as the Bowens to my untrained eye, indeed from behind the camera I couldn't tell the difference I have heard that there is very little difference between these lights and the new D-lite systems from Elinchrom, food for thought there at least.
Sekonic L308 lightmeter
It took Jonathan about one minute to show me how this bit of kit works, after that it was fairly plain sailing At times it didn't seem to want to trigger the flash units despite being connected to a lead that worked fine on the camera As an electrician I found myself wondering if the centre pin inside the socket was exactly the right size or perhaps a shade too small in diameter It did work most of the time and when it did so it gave accurate incident readings.
The Heath Robinson Approach
Ok if there is plenty of ambient light and a good overhead reflective surface, otherwise - enough said!!
If you want to join us on the next ThinkCamera Reader Shoot Out then just drop me an email.
