> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > We rented a hotel > room to do portraits for a couple who's just got > married, and some glamour/lingerie for another lady. > We used these friends as guinea pigs for our > experiments.
My girlfriend has one of these guinea pigs. One day she walked up to me and asked, "Can I borrow you camera to take naked pics of my girlfriend"? Uh. Ok. > > I have a bunch of hot shoe flashes, the top of which > was a 120J TTL. That day I just pointed that to the > roof at 1/16 power, and it wasn't doing anything but > trigger the real strobe. I have a small Vivitar 4600 > bare bulb flash with built-in slave. I was expecting > it could serve as background light or fill light or > whatever, but it was a total failure for the 4600. I > just didn't have the proper reflector to use it > effectively. Hair lights are generally very "snooty" or "spotty". A barebulb is the exact opposite. > > The 120J has about 150ws already. I was thinking, > maybe I could do something to use it as a hairlight, > a background light or a fill light. But what do I > need in order to make that happen ? First I need a > stand, but how do I put a shoe mount flash on a > light stand ? They have adapters for lightstands. Surf around the B&H site. > > I guess I would need honeycomb or barn doors for > hair light... The 120J has a norman type reflector. > And then I would need a slave trigger for it. Am I > missing anything ? I've seen people jury rig spots with various types of tubing. You could probably also fashion some sort of honeycomb out of something. The spots that White Lightning sells for their flashes might work. Maybe Sunpak already makes something for the 120J? > > I didn't rent a softbox, but is the weight of a soft > box supported by the strobe or by the stand ? Generally the strobe. Higher end strobes have heavy duty connectors for this sort of thing. Some giant boxes have a stand connection, I think. > Sorry > for such a stupid question but I am still a > beginner. The 120J won't be able to hold anything heavy. Yeah, good luck on that. > > Throughout that day I seldom use the flash I rented > past 1/2 power and I've heard there was a rule of > thumb to buy twice the power as you need so 400ws > seems to be just right. We are getting apertures > like f/22 with ISO 100 film but my girlfriend says > she likes that and sometimes we use medium format > which requires a smaller f-stop. I want to limit my > investment to one monolight at this time because I > want to master one light, and plus the 120J I > already have at the most (2 lights) before I acquire > more gear. Any recommendations on good/inexpensive > monolights are greatly appreciated. (For 1-2 people > portraits and glamour.) http://www.alienbees.com/ 400WS is enough for most stuff. tv
