# Larger Umbrella = Less hot spot?



## fooby (Jun 13, 2014)

I want a large, soft light source for shooting portraits when I want to  stay light and use speedlites. I know that standard sized shoot through  umbrellas suffer from hot spots due to their profile and how all of the  light is focused on the part closest to the subject. Would this be  alleviated somewhat with a much bigger (75") umbrella? For reference, my  favourite light sources are very large octaboxes placed as close to the subject as I can get them for the most part.

Thanks!


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## KmH (Jun 13, 2014)

A speedlight will not fill a 75" umbrella with light if the speedlight is on the same light stand as the umbrella.

Explore using a brolly (part umbrella, part softbox) instead, but a softbox will be even better.
PBL 43" Photo Softbox Umbrella Reflective Steve Kaeser Photographic Lighting


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## fooby (Jun 13, 2014)

KmH said:


> A speedlight will not fill a 75" umbrella with light if the speedlight is on the same light stand as the umbrella.
> 
> Explore using a brolly (part umbrella, part softbox) instead, but a softbox will be even better.
> PBL 43" Photo Softbox Umbrella Reflective Steve Kaeser Photographic Lighting


Thank you, I have been looking into the umbrella softboxes but they don't seem to do them in the extra large sizes, and adjusting manual speedlites would be a pain with them. Would a setup using multiple speedlites to help fill the umbrella work? Also, wouldn't the flat space on a larger umbrella be much larger than that of a smaller one before it starts to fall off?


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## Mike_E (Jun 14, 2014)

Oily skin is just to shine.  About the only thing you can really do, aside from getting them to wash their faces, is to use a base makeup.

You might look here Revlon PhotoReady? Collection | Revlon.com


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## KmH (Jun 14, 2014)

No doubt, face powder is an essential piece of kit for portraiture to control 'shiny'.

Quality natural bristle cosmetics brushes not used for the face powder work good for cleaning lenses and other camera gear too.

Multiple speed lights will give you more power but won't necessarily fill a 75" or larger umbrella.

With that large a light modifier a lot of light is going to go somewhere other than onto your subject so you would likely need multiple speed lights just to have sufficient light power.

Frankly, with modifiers that large studio strobes make a lot more sense. To facilitate on-location work they make battery packs for and inverters for many brands of studio flash units.


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## TCampbell (Jun 14, 2014)

fooby said:


> I want a large, soft light source for shooting portraits when I want to  stay light and use speedlites. I know that standard sized shoot through  umbrellas suffer from hot spots due to their profile and how all of the  light is focused on the part closest to the subject. Would this be  alleviated somewhat with a much bigger (75") umbrella? For reference, my  favourite light sources are very large octaboxes placed as close to the subject as I can get them for the most part.
> 
> Thanks!



Question:  Are you manually adjusting the speedlite's reflector (zoom adjustment) to wide and/or do you have a "wide diffuser" panel on your flash?

Ordinarily you can place the light close in or far back along the umbrella rod, but many speed lights have a wide-diffuser panel which stores inside the flash that you can slide out and hinge down).  This will help widen the light on the umbrella to reduce the hot-spots.  If the speedlite head is zoomed to a long focal length (minimal spread) then you'd get a hot-spot even if the speedlite is far back along the rod.

Those larger umbrellas are often "parabolic" reflecting (not shoot-through) umbrellas.  The point of a parabolic mirror is that it has a focus point and a light positioned at that focus point will reflect off the parabola in such a way that the light rays will all shine directly forward ... it's a fairly focused beam designed to minimize spread (which means you can set that light at substantial distances and still have very strong light).


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## fooby (Jun 14, 2014)

I would love to invest in a couple of AlienBees and the battery pack that Paul C Buff also makes, but being from the UK, I have found nothing anywhere near that price point. Don't get me wrong I will transition to strobes as soon as I can, but I just don't have thousands of pounds to invest in power packs for location shooting whilst doing tests to build my portfolio 

TCampbell - this is what I was thinking would work fine for filling a larger umbrella. Maybe it's worth buying a large umbrella, testing, and then I can always return if I'm not getting the results I'm after.


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## Derrel (Jun 14, 2014)

Maybe you can watch this video on umbrella performance and glean some information.






Also, you do not need to limit yourself to using just a single speedlight in an umbrella; there are multiple ways to mount and aim two, or even three, speedlights into an umbrella. As far as low-cost monolight type flashes, I am pretty positive that you can purchase equally low-priced, China-made monolight flash units (like Alien Bees are) from the UK's e-Bay site. The Mettle company for example, makes monolights in Hong Kong, and those are sold all over the world under various brand names.

As far as 72-inch umbrellas go: I bought one a few months ago, a Westcott six-foot, silvered, parabolic, 16-rib design. Wow...what a giant pain in the ass. Seriously. I'll gladly stick with 30,33,and 40 and 43-inch umbrellas for the majority of uses. A 72 inch umbrella is physically a real challenge in MANY shooting environments. It's.Just.So.Big.


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## fooby (Jun 14, 2014)

Thank you for the video, I hadn't seen that one before! It's not the strobes themselves that are the problem, it's the power packs. The prices just seem utterly ridiculous on the UK market. The two I can find that work on UK power are by Elinchrom and Profoto - both well up into the thousands.


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## TCampbell (Jun 14, 2014)

fooby said:


> Thank you for the video, I hadn't seen that one before! It's not the strobes themselves that are the problem, it's the power packs. The prices just seem utterly ridiculous on the UK market. The two I can find that work on UK power are by Elinchrom and Profoto - both well up into the thousands.



You may be interested in this video to help understand how you might want to consider the appropriate power level of a studio flash.






I've been looking at the Profoto B1 "Location Kit".  That sure does seem appealing, but it's nearly $4k in US dollars.  In the UK I think you may need to sell your house and move into the shipping box that the flash arrived in to afford it.


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## fooby (Jun 14, 2014)

TCampbell said:


> I've been looking at the Profoto B1 "Location Kit".  That sure does seem appealing, but it's nearly $4k in US dollars.  In the UK I think you may need to sell your house and move into the shipping box that the flash arrived in to afford it.


Yup, those are the ones available here too. I would happily import one of the Paul C Buff solutions but apparently they're incompatible with UK powered strobes, so I would have to import those too which would make it at least double the usual cost. It's looking pretty bad as a good amount of the ideas I have for my portfolio are in remote locations or water based!

I have found an adapter that allows the use of speedlites with Elinchrom modifiers - this seems like it might be a solution, but I'm worried that I won't have enough power - there doesn't seem to be anything for multiple lights.


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## Derrel (Jun 14, 2014)

fooby said:


> Thank you for the video, I hadn't seen that one before! It's not the strobes themselves that are the problem, it's the power packs. The prices just seem utterly ridiculous on the UK market. The two I can find that work on UK power are by Elinchrom and Profoto - both well up into the thousands.



Maybe you're confusing monolights, which have the capacitors to store the current, and the flashtube and associated wiring ALL contained within the same housing, hence the term "mono bloc" or "monolight" flash units, and box-and-cable systems, also called pack-and-head systems. Alien Bees are monolights. Bowens was the first company that originated the "mono bloc" style flash, several decades ago.

Profoto makes both pack-and-head systems, as well as monolight type units.

A 200 Watt-second monolight is ample power for single-person portraiture in most cases. There's a great temptation to be lured in by advertising into buying 1,000 to 1,600 Watt-second flash units, which are wayyyyyyyyyyy too powerful for many uses with today's ISO 100 to ISO 320 d-slr capabilities.


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## fooby (Jun 14, 2014)

Derrel said:


> fooby said:
> 
> 
> > Thank you for the video, I hadn't seen that one before! It's not the strobes themselves that are the problem, it's the power packs. The prices just seem utterly ridiculous on the UK market. The two I can find that work on UK power are by Elinchrom and Profoto - both well up into the thousands.
> ...


My problem is location shooting - neither system has the option to shoot where there are no power outlets.


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## hombredelmar (Jun 14, 2014)

As it was mentioned earlier u can use inverters


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## Derrel (Jun 14, 2014)

All you need is a battery and pure sine wave inverter, like the ones sold by Innovatronix, OR made do-it-yourself. Innovatronix has inverter/battery models designed for world-wide use and changing.

Tronix Explorer

My location shooting kit is a Tronix Explorer and a cart, and then I use one of several power packs from 200 to 88 Watt-seconds, and 1,2,or 3 flash heads. I use the 18-pound Explorer and the power pack's weight as ballast, and have a light stand that is secured to the cart's upright handle, so I have the ability to just wheel around my power supply, 11-foot light stand, and a light head + umbrella (usually) all with about 30 pounds of ballast to keep things from tipping over. I usually use a cheap Speedotron D402 power pack, which weighs 11 pounds, and uses affordable flash heads that I can buy on eBay for $40-$90 per head. I have a bunch of flash heads I got cheap.


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## hombredelmar (Jun 14, 2014)

KmH said:


> A speedlight will not fill a 75" umbrella with light if the speedlight is on the same light stand as the umbrella.
> 
> Explore using a brolly (part umbrella, part softbox) instead, but a softbox will be even better.
> PBL 43" Photo Softbox Umbrella Reflective Steve Kaeser Photographic Lighting



which softbox would u recommend for a speedlight, something that would be easy to assemble on location and something that would not cost hundreds of dollars? 

Thank u!


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## fooby (Jun 14, 2014)

Derrel said:


> All you need is a battery and pure sine wave inverter, like the ones sold by Innovatronix, OR made do-it-yourself. Innovatronix has inverter/battery models designed for world-wide use and changing.
> 
> Tronix Explorer
> 
> My location shooting kit is a Tronix Explorer and a cart, and then I use one of several power packs from 200 to 88 Watt-seconds, and 1,2,or 3 flash heads. I use the 18-pound Explorer and the power pack's weight as ballast, and have a light stand that is secured to the cart's upright handle, so I have the ability to just wheel around my power supply, 11-foot light stand, and a light head + umbrella (usually) all with about 30 pounds of ballast to keep things from tipping over. I usually use a cheap Speedotron D402 power pack, which weighs 11 pounds, and uses affordable flash heads that I can buy on eBay for $40-$90 per head. I have a bunch of flash heads I got cheap.


Ah I see, I assumed inverters were exactly what the incredibly expensive ones were, and that they had to be different to power strobes. Am I right in thinking that I could use any inverter on the market to power strobes then? I know of a bunch of places that sell them for use by builders and such for power tools and battery charging.


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## Derrel (Jun 14, 2014)

No, you cannot use just "any" inverter; you need one that offers a *pure sine wave*. Check into what people in the UK are using by searching the web and youtube for DIY inverter for photo lights. Still, a good pure sine wave inverter is NOT that expensive!!! Nor are the batteries. I recently replaced the battery in my 7 year-old TRONIX, and I payed $41 US dollars for the battery from a USA chain called "Radio Shack".


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## Mike_E (Jun 14, 2014)

One of these and a deep cycle 12v auto battery will power a fairly long shoot, not as long if you use the modeling lights.

Amazon.com : 3000 Watt Peak 1500 Watt Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter 12 V Dc Input / 220 V-240 V Ac Output 60 Hz Frequency : Vehicle Power Inverters : MP3 Players & Accessories

This one's $185 plus another $120 for a battery and box to put it in and a couple of short cables to hook it up and 'bob's your uncle'.


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## fooby (Jun 15, 2014)

Mike_E said:


> One of these and a deep cycle 12v auto battery will power a fairly long shoot, not as long if you use the modeling lights.
> 
> Amazon.com : 3000 Watt Peak 1500 Watt Pure Sine Wave Power Inverter 12 V Dc Input / 220 V-240 V Ac Output 60 Hz Frequency : Vehicle Power Inverters : MP3 Players & Accessories
> 
> This one's $185 plus another $120 for a battery and box to put it in and a couple of short cables to hook it up and 'bob's your uncle'.


Thank you, this sounds like a much better idea than blowing thousands on something that's bulkier.


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## BekahAura (Jun 15, 2014)

I use pocket boxes for my macro photography. They strap right on to the flash with an elastic band and velcro. They are small and cheap and probably would help to diffuse your flash even further when shooting through an umbrella. Westcott Pocketbox Mini - 6 x 7" 266 B&H Photo Video I'm not sure where I got mine but the one I linked to is similar.


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## Derrel (Jun 15, 2014)

I bought one of these, but in the USA's appropriate voltage. Portable Battery Packs : Tronix Explorer 1200 230V/50Hz (Universal Socket Model) + Carry Case

It is listed as discontinued, but it might still be available it says. The output voltage of this Tronix Explorer 1200 model is 230V/50Hz. Not sure if that is what you need for your mains power there.

Photogenic has recently begun offering a new type, one powered by a lithium-ion battery system, called the Photogenic ION, as seen here.  http://www.rakuten.com/prod/photoge...s4l4synoDYuHsioVV5WyWcKsiTV8nT-MEFOKQTFHw_wcB

I realize this specific one is for 120 volt system equipment--but I think it portends the dawn of a new era, with LIGHTER, smaller lithium-ion batteries being paired with pure sine wave inverters. If this is successful, I expect to see Made in Hong Kong knock-off versions for sale soon.

As far as fast, powerful speedlight flash recycling, the American company Quantum Instruments has made the Quantum Battery 1 for many years, and it can power two speedlights for at least 450 flashes per charge, based on my experience shooting two light simultaneously off of one, aged Battery 1 pack. These are very small, about 4x4 x 1.75 inches, and weighing maybe 2 pounds.


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## fooby (Jun 16, 2014)

Derrel said:


> I bought one of these, but in the USA's appropriate voltage. Portable Battery Packs : Tronix Explorer 1200 230V/50Hz (Universal Socket Model) + Carry Case
> 
> It is listed as discontinued, but it might still be available it says. The output voltage of this Tronix Explorer 1200 model is 230V/50Hz. Not sure if that is what you need for your mains power there.
> 
> ...


Thank you. Whilst those Tronix packs look perfect, they suffer the same flaw as the Paul C ones - import cost. It nearly doubles the price! I have however found a budget solution by using the pure sine wave inverter and a battery pack. I think that will work perfect!

Calumet are another company making quality battery packs for Speedlites - probably the best bet for UK users.


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## TeomanDemirhan (Jul 13, 2014)

Size doesn't matter, but shape does. 

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## table1349 (Jul 13, 2014)

Fooby, Not sure of your level with the use of lighting, and not trying to offend here but if you don't have you might consider this book. Light Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting
It is an excellent resource that anyone working with lighting can use.


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