On the Road with FourSquare
When traveling I often prefer speedlights as a light source for making portraits using one of the FourSquare kits available from Lightware Direct. There are several options available allowing you to chose the one that works best for your kind of photography, including a 30 x 30-inch lightbank with a compact sleeve that fits inside any airline carry-on. Using the FourSquare block that’s in the kit you can mount from one to four...
Shanny Speedlights in the Studio
If you missed my First Glace post on the Shanny speedlights take a quick look at it, before reading today’s post. Or not. As I’ve said many times this is not a “my way or the highway blog.” The Shanny SN600EX-RF for Canon ($199.99) is a transceiver speedlight that is both a transmitter and receiver. The flash has all the same functions as the ($149.95) SN600SC but adds a wireless feature with 15 channels and 3 groups with...
At First Glance: Shanny SN600EX-RF Speedlights
OmegaBrandess is now the distributor of Shanny speedlights including the SN600SC (Canon) & SN600SN (Nikon) TTL and SN600EX-RF (Canon) and SN910EX-RF (Nikon) Radio Transceiver speedlights. Also available are two compatible Radio Triggers with the SN-E3-RF TTL transceiver for Canon and the SN910-TX TTL transmitter for Nikon. When OmegaBrandess contacted me about reviewing a Shanny flash, I admitted that I was not familiar with...
A Snoot for Your Speedlight
What’s in Your Camera Bag? Here’s a small lighting accessory that easily fits in even the most compact camera bag: Zoot Snoot is one of the most clever speedlight accessories that I’ve come across in a long time. It’s a flexible, neoprene snoot designed to slip over your speedlight’s (or speedlite if it’s a Canon) flash head. You can think of it as the opposite of the Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce diffuser. Where the...
Return of the Vivitar 285: The Cactus KF36
They don’t make’em like they used to.”—old photography cliché Well, maybe they do. Photographers who have been around a while may fondly remember the Vivitar 283 and 285 speedlights. They were simple, full adjustable manual speedlights and I made many photographs with them back in the day. Now as photographers embrace speedlights for on-location lighting I keep wishing that I had one of my old 285’s. Sure you can buy used Vivitar 285s...
One Way to Wirelessly Trigger Canon Speedlights
I am not a “Master of the Speedlight” but there is no doubt that the use of speedlights for on-location portrait lighting is becoming the overwhelming choice for many photographers and that was the purpose of writing my ongoing five part series on Assembling a Location Lighting Kit. While that kit includes lots of the big pieces there are also smaller must-have accessories that belong in it starting with wireless flash...
