anyone experience with the viewfinder kit for Nikon CLS... seems to be interesting. Available for a cheap price in my neighborhood. I was wondering if this would make sense for occasional use vs the extended and heavy strobe kit... I have already used my sb-xxx's on tripods with umbrellas with some success, adding snoots and the other options could be nice...
I think I'd be more impressed if just about every example shot on their site didn't look underexposed ... That said I am going to an entirely CLS based light set-up from strobes. Just sick of carrying so much junk around.
Count me in as extremely skeptical. Those little beauty dish thingies look nice, but nothing that's truly 'beauty dish' like at all. More like turning the light out of an SB-800 into something more akin to a bare studio strobe.
Jammy Straub wrote:
Count me in as extremely skeptical. Those little beauty dish thingies look nice, but nothing that's truly 'beauty dish' like at all. More like turning the light out of an SB-800 into something more akin to a bare studio strobe.
+1 ... almost any modifier of the nature of a BD on a speed light, won't duplicate the effect of studio flash. They're just too small.
The Honl accessories are surely much easier to stow and pack for traveling and take up far less space. Throw in a couple of Wescot double fold umbrellas, and you have a wonderful mobile lighting kit.
butchM wrote:
+1 ... almost any modifier of the nature of a BD on a speed light, won't duplicate the effect of studio flash. They're just too small.
The Honl accessories are surely much easier to stow and pack for traveling and take up far less space. Throw in a couple of Wescot double fold umbrellas, and you have a wonderful mobile lighting kit.
+1 to Jammy and butch. The BD is small; you would need to place it uncomfortably close to your subject and it would be difficult to feather compared to a standard sized BD. For background spots, the small reflectors aren't that bad; but they're still small. The gridded reflectors and snoots could be effective, but when used as a hair light, subject placement would have to be dialed in very carefully (it would be easier to use a gridded strip, for example). For bare bulb and/or interior bounce, why would you not just turn your speedlight head vertical and use a Stofen?
I hate to be too critical since I have not actually tested these modifiers. But you would typically want some large modifiers (e.g., umbrellas and softboxes) for which speedlights are underpowered. However, add a few speedlights with these modifiers to one or two studio strobes with standard modifiers and you would have a pretty lightweight and versatile indoor or location kit. Or for a small indoor studio (or outdoor fill), add an umbrella, Softlighter, etc. to a speedlight and then add the snoots and reflectors from this kit and it might work well for some situations.
seems to be interesting. Available for a cheap price in my neighborhood. I was wondering if this would make sense for occasional use vs the extended and heavy strobe kit... I have already used my sb-xxx's on tripods with umbrellas with some success, adding snoots and the other options could be nice...