jzucker wrote:
What do you guys do? It seems that shade or even a hood is too much and the panel is not viewable.
You could try moving to Seattle or London where overcast really means overcast and the chances that you will be shooting outside and it being sunny at the same time are too remote to worry about.
Seriously, on most lights, if this was the case, you could just use the rear panel, but that too is LCD.
hugowolf wrote:
You could try moving to Seattle or London where overcast really means overcast and the chances that you will be shooting outside and it being sunny at the same time are too remote to worry about.
Seriously, on most lights, if this was the case, you could just use the rear panel, but that too is LCD.
Brian A
rear panel works fine for the einsteins because it defaults to power adjustment with the arrow keys but that doesn't help when the light's on a boom.
jzucker wrote:
What do you guys do? It seems that shade or even a hood is too much and the panel is not viewable.
One (not so cheap) option would be to use the Pocket Wizard system instead of the Cyber Commander. The PW's do have some limitations, but sunlight visibility is not one of them.
hugowolf wrote:
...You could try moving to Seattle...the chances that you will be shooting outside and it being sunny at the same time are too remote to worry about.
I guess you've never been here in the summer; especially this past summer.
Strobo wrote:
One (not so cheap) option would be to use the Pocket Wizard system instead of the Cyber Commander. The PW's do have some limitations, but sunlight visibility is not one of them.
But the pocketwizards only give you a subset of the power range. Not sure i'd want to pay more $$$ for that limitation.
jzucker wrote:
But the pocketwizards only give you a subset of the power range. Not sure i'd want to pay more $$$ for that limitation.
That's my main concern with those as well, along with 1/3rd stop rather than 1/10th stop increments. I haven't looked into it in detail but I believe there's an easy way to change the centerpoint of the power range on the fly.
In the end though, it just depends on what features are important to you and how you work. It's pretty hard to beat the simplicity and ease of use of one finger on a hotshoe-mounted dial for power adjustments.
Strobo wrote:
That's my main concern with those as well, along with 1/3rd stop rather than 1/10th stop increments. I haven't looked into it in detail but I believe there's an easy way to change the centerpoint of the power range on the fly.
In the end though, it just depends on what features are important to you and how you work. It's pretty hard to beat the simplicity and ease of use of one finger on a hotshoe-mounted dial for power adjustments.
I think the only way to change the center point is to reprogram the flash via USB and a computer.
if I crank up the brightness to 100% it's viewable if I shade the screen. I'll have to try it in a variety of lighting situations but that's an acceptable limitation as long as the batteries hold up for an entire session.
Are you guys using it as a meter too? If it's accurate enough, I could leave my L358 at home...
jzucker wrote:
I think the only way to change the center point is to reprogram the flash via USB and a computer.
I could be wrong but I thought I saw a video a while back that allowed you to use flash exposure compensation to shift if up and down (when using the AC3 controller). That could work. Otherwise it'd be a deal killer for a lot of people.
Perhaps someone who has hands on experience with one can chime in with their thoughts.
i do use the cst as a trigger. Mine calibrates .3 stops over the L358. Once I added +0.3 exposure comp in the CC it seems to be dead on. One thing I dislike is that it's easy to accidentally nudge the menu button into a different mode when you're trying to fire the test shot/meter reading. It'd be nice if there was a dedicated button like the CST. But I'm pretty happy with the indoor usefulness.
Also, after 3-4 days of practice the user interface doesn't bother me so much but my assistant has no clue how to use it. Compared to the skyport I was using, it's much more difficult. On the other hand it's got way more functionality so I'm pretty happy.
i never use the L358 for percentage of flash mode. How do you like working in that mode? I always just take an ambient reading with the meter and then adjust the flash output and meter for however dark i want the BG to be. Since I would normally be using just one main light outdoors, it might be easier to just skip the CC altogether although sometimes it's convenient if the light is high up on the stand ...
I find the %Flash to be extremely useful. That's my main target. Of course, you can adjust the shutter speed on the meter and it will show you the new fstop and %Flash. It makes it really fast to set.
Most of the time, I also use a kicker/hair light outdoors. It's also controlled from the CC. It's a little harder to meter but I hit a target starting point and then take a test shot. I also use a Hoodman to view the results on the back of the camera.
thanks onetrack. I'll have to give that a try. What modifier do you use for the hair/kicker? I've occasionally taken a 2nd light in a 7" reflector with a grid for kicker but haven't done it recently.
