Making The Most Of One Location & LumoPro 160 Speedlight Review

Studio portraits of Cat.

Cat and I love to just play around and experiment with lights in our small home studio when we're bored. Above is two shots from one of our recent sessions.

Looking at these shots you can instantly see that they are very different, one is quite natural with my LumoPro 160 speedlight used to softly light the face combined with a shallow depth of field (50mm at f1.4 if I remember correctly) focussed on the eye's to give a really nice, soft, beautiful portrait (headshot kind of vibe) and the other is very harsh with the LumoPro used to blow almost everything out, resulting in a raw, hard and edgy outcome with a nice bit of attitude thrown in. These images were taken within seconds of each other, I just changed the aperture, flash power and my viewpoint while staying in the same spot to create a completely different picture with a completely different feel. In the first image I am standing more above her looking down to get the wood floor texture in the background giving a innocent and soft quality to the overall image, on the second I just bent down to her eye level, asked her to pull her hair back while staring down the camera (she is sitting on the floor for both images). I am a big advocate for being able to get the most out of one spot rather than having to change location constantly and I feel that practicing this can help you become a much better photographer, it keeps you on your toes. Sometimes on shoots you don't get the luxury of great locations and have to work with what you've got so being able to make the most of your surroundings is a very valuable skill.

I have wanted to do a short review of the Lumopro 160 for a while. So here it is.
To be honest there isn't really that much to say. It simply is a great flash. If you want to get into off camera lighting and are not worried about TTL controls then this in my opinion is the best option out there. It gives the same power as Nikon or Canon's highest models at much less of a price. I payed £130 for mine and could not be happier, I like to work manually with my flash settings to maintain full control of the situation and this unit is perfect for this. I have had no problems with it and can't think of a bad thing to say.

So if you are looking into off camera lighting and don't need the power of a strobe or TTL controls then I would highly recommend taking a look at this LumoPro 160. Also if you haven't already then check out http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/ this site will help get you well on your way in the world of flash, this is where I first heard about the LumoPro 160 and off camera abilities.


http://www.drewportfolio.com/
andrew@drewportfolio.com

Testing My New White Seamless Backdrop

Testing out my new white seamless paper. I love this thing. Never thought I would like to work on seamless (or white seamless at least) but It is so liberating and challenging to omit all backgrounds and props. It really makes you work hard to get a great image. I am using this with my Lumopro 160 speedlight and the lastolite ezybox softbox. I am looking into getting either a bowens or elinchrom strobe kit soon for the extra power and ability to use them with much larger light modifiers like an octabox in order to create a much larger and softer light.

I had a problem with the paper though. When it arrived I set it up only to realise that there was a continuous weird indent pattern all the way down the middle of the roll which pretty much renders it useless for anything other than blasting light and rendering it pure white (which washes out the indent). This is annoying as I wanted to shoot a lot as a grey background by not letting so much light fall on to the paper but when doing this the indent ruins the picture and is so large and weirdly shaped that it would take too much photoshop work to erase. I got in touch with the company I bought it from and they quickly said they would send me a replacement (which should arrive today) so soon I can start using the paper the way I initially intended. I’ll post the results as they come.

Anyway this is a quick image of Cat, you can’t really see much of the paper here (it could easily just have been a white wall) but I will post some wider shots later.

I used the Lumopro 160 shot through a Lastolite Ezybox softbox from above my head, pretty much straight down at her and quite close. I really liked the result. I thought her expression was pretty funny.

For anyone who’s interested I will post a review of the Lumopro 160 and the Lastolite Ezybox kit within the week. I am going to write a lot more reviews of equipment I use in the future, focussing on how the items work in practical use, as when I was looking to buy some items there wasn’t much great info out there online (except strobist.com of course). If your getting into lighting and have not checked out this site then you need to get over there now, NOW!. www.strobist.blogspot.com

http://www.drewportfolio.com/
andrew@drewportfolio.com