Some new speedlite and PLM shots

[Stephen Eastwood]

hi all, I have been putting together a rather complete speedlite kit (3 kits, 9-11 lights/battery packs, and TT5's with softboxes, grids, snoots, fresnels, grip gear, stands, and other accessories all in a small rolling case, each case one third the size and 1/4th the weight of my previous 2 pack, 3 head broncolor kits) To the case I add one convertible boom/15 foot stand and one small tripod strapped outside.

So this weekend I was giving a small demo of that setup, all thats in the case and also brought the big 86" PLM to play with in conjunction. Here are a few of the shots from that.

It was a rainy gray day, so I was using a CTB in fact I used 1 1/2 CTB to make the main lights very blue and when balanced for a warm tone the gray day became far warmer and near orange glow.

I have mounts for 3 speedlites in the PLM but on this I was only using 1 speedlite and it was very powerful even with a omni bounce on it to spread it out, showing just how efficient the PLM actually is, I had it dialed down to 1:8 against the main speedlite.

I have a breakdown and links to what is in each of my kits on my tutorial pages http://www.StephenEastwood.com/tutorials under "whats in my speedlite kits"

 

[Stephen Eastwood]

 

[Stephen Eastwood]

 

[Asher Kelman]

Steve,

Very enterprising!*

For the sake of completeness could you add some pics of the gear and cases and a glossary of abbreviations?

Thanks,

Asher

 

[Stephen Eastwood]

well for this I was using limited gear as it was simple, I had the speedlites, (all 580exII's) with CP-E4 battery packs and Pocketwizard TT5 units on each. Camera had a TT5 and ST-E2 for ratio controls. main light indoors ( not PLM (Parabolic light modifier shots) was a westscot halo with 1 and 1/2 CTB's (Color Temp Blue gels, 1 CTB changes tungsten to daylight, 3200k to 5700k so 1 1/2 was a 4600 degree cooling down ) and I had a 580 on a boom with Honl Grid and 1 1/2 CTB, as hair/rim light, and one in a wastscot Apollo 24" open faced shooting at the background to add light to a dark scene. That background light had no gel so it was warmer in color temp by 4600 degrees) I dragged the shutter a tad to burn out the windows and as the sky was fairly dark and gray the extra blue gels helped in creating the orange glow. (I adjusted in camera to account for the blue gels and be even slightly warmer than the accurate temp to give the model a nice pleasing warm light, that made the daylight outside coming in nice and warm in comparison)

For the sundown roof and puddle shots I went outside with two lights, one in the open face apollo and one in a halo, the halo still had 1 1/2 blue (CTB) gels and the apollo on the hair had 1 CTB gel making it warmer than the main, I White balanced for the main and a tad warmer making the hint of color in the sky much, much warmer than what was actually there. The puddle was from the rain of the day, (it stopped raining maybe 20 minutes earlier)

The face shot (banana) was a halo above and an apollo with cover below ratio'd down from camera to work as a low fill.

All lights in my halo or apollo face into the back reflective material and bounce out to create a soft light ( to create more of a center hotspot you can face them forward out the diffusion material)

on the PLM shot, I had one speedlite with TT5 and mini ball head (making it ride along the shaft tighter to be more centered, I had an omni bounce to create a wider spread of light to better fill the 86" parabolic, and was using a 580 in a halo as a main light.

All lights are controlled through the camera, camera set to Manual, ratio on and lights are grouped in A, B or C, I had A (the main) at 8:1 over B (in the parabolic)

a full list of what and where is here: I have far more lights and modifiers in my kits, but this was relatively simple.

http://www.stepheneastwood.com/tutorials/speedlite_equipment_list.htm


And if anyone cares most all clothes boots and jewelry was designer except the black hat and blue top. I bring my own (store clerks love me, I buy a ton of clothes and jewlery when I was only looking for one thing, I am a shopaholic when it comes to womens clothes I can use IN SHOOT's that is)

Banana was not a designer accessory, but quite tasty from what I here.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks Stephen for sharing in such generous detail.



I think it's worth pointing out the extensive resource of tutorials on your website http://www.stepheneastwood.com/tutorials/

Asher

Everyone should look this up. Just pick "Beauty dish" as a start and you'll get hooked like I was!

 

[Ian L. Sitren]

Fantastic, very impressive!

Greatly appreciate you sharing the hard work you went thru to put this together.

I have been reading mixed reviews about the TT5 units, have you experienced any problems with firing the 580's?

 

[Stephen Eastwood]

Fantastic, very impressive!

Greatly appreciate you sharing the hard work you went thru to put this together.

I have been reading mixed reviews about the TT5 units, have you experienced any problems with firing the 580's?

none at all, but over about 60 feet if I did I have veilsheild which when I tried it out made 250feet away and I got tired of walking so it may have gone further.

veilsheild is listed above on the whats in the kit page. I also have a few 550ex in one of my 11 light kits so I could use them as they do not have the same issue. But to date on about 15 location shoots I have not used veilsheild or had any issue.

 

[Frank Doorhof]

Love N2 and the second serie.
Wonderful stuff.