Studio/Portable Strobes

JohnBradbury

JohnBradbury

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This morning I started a thread called 'Rotolight AEOS 2 / Anova Pro 2 - Thoughts, experiences?' to ask for some advice around the use of LED lights for photography. Although expensive they did seem to tick a lot of the boxes for me: lightweight, good performance on battery, excellent build quality. However, based on the responses I'm expanding my search to include none LED lights specifically for stills.

I'm a complete beginner when it comes to lighting.

I have a budget of around £2500 - £3000 which will need to include battery packs and modifiers.

I'm looking to shoot both studio and location based portraiture with weight and portability being the biggest factors for me.
 
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That's a decent budget if it's just for stills, though big battery powered units will eat it up pretty quickly.

I wouldn't advise spending it all in one go though. If you're new to lighting, it's a very good idea to start small and simple with just one light and a softbox or umbrella plus reflector, and build from there. That's all you need for some excellent portraits and IMHO less is usually more with lighting. If you jump in with three lights you will end up with a mess of conflicting shadows and not know how to fix it.

With just one light, you will learn a lot quickly, about how light works and how size and distance effects everything, and get some great results. Then you won't need to ask basic stuff about what new products to get as you'll already have a pretty good idea. And we'd all be second guessing anyway as there's a lot of choice when you get into it, depending on what direction you want to take.

Either way, Godox is probably the place to start (or Pixapro - Godox overbranded from Essential Photo). When it comes to budget, the fundamental question is: indoors studio with mains access, or outdoors location? Mains is much cheaper and you don't need so much power; outdoors it's batteries (expensive) and lots of power needed (expensive) because the ambient light level sets the baseline and the sun is very bright. You can mix and match mains with battery power.
 
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I can highly recommend the Godox flash lighting system John I'm in the process of switching almost completely to its flashes.
At the moment I own 2 fairly small lightweight small speeedlights TT350 F & TT 350 O along with the more powerful V 560 II and the AD 200 along with T1 triggers for Canon, Fuji,Nikon & Olympus.
The real benefit of this is the full cross compatibility across the different camera system :)
I can use all four speedlights with the different triggers so when I'm with a local group, users of different camera systems can all use the same lighting system or individuals can change various settings power and channels
These are radio triggers and receivers so no line of site is needed.
There have a number of more powerful units as well so check them out here

https://www.essentialphoto.co.uk/

They also offer a full range of light modifiers stands and props.
These units can all be found under different brand names as well :)
Happy shopping(y)
 
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I agree with Richard on this...
I would suggest a single AD600 as the start point for what you want/budget... the earlier manual one is probably the best bang for buck currently. In the studio it is likely more power than you will need, but you can always use an ND filter if the power can't adjust low enough.

The bigger issue outdoors (IMO) is stability/security... larger modifiers want to fall/blow over much more easily. The reverse folding stands can be set with the legs flat on the ground so they can be staked easily. Otherwise, cords/stakes/weight bags are all essential, maybe even in addition to each other. And don't cheap out on flimsy "lightweight" stands either... it's just not worth it IMO.
 
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What the others have said - you won't know what you need until you've got a bit more experience. I could happily spend £3k for you, but...

It looks as though the AD600Pro might be the first affordable system which can really double as location lighting and indoor studio strobe but you'd be daft to build a full kit based on that based on no experience or developed style at all.

You can get a VERY long way outdoors with a simple reflector like the Lastolite difflector - and do an awful lot indoors with £300 worth of studio kit.
 
gremlin16 said:
Jason Lanier is an advocate of rotolight, he’s not to every one’s taste (including me). But probably plenty of material for you to review on the lights.
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Well, he would like them, wouldn't he?
My own opinion is that they're overpriced junk... - but then I'm not getting paid for my opinions.
As for your studio/location flash, the Godox AD600 seems to tick all of your boxes, but it would make financial sense to get something like the lencarta smartflash for studio only use (fully compatible with all other Godox flashes).
As for getting really good light stands, I00% agree.
As for large light modifiers blowing over, again I agree but really large softboxes etc are far less important where there is a high level of ambient light, and anyway the lencarta ones have securing rings fitted.
 
gremlin16 said:
Jason Lanier is an advocate of rotolight, he’s not to every one’s taste (including me). But probably plenty of material for you to review on the lights.
Click to expand...

Strangely all the videos are shot in dark places or low light - Lanier is a tart, a great self publicist and gets paid a lot to demonstrate kit

Mike
 
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