I have always used a cone with the monolights at wedding receptions. I am contemplating on going bare bulb with the monolights. Anyone have any experience either way, good or bad? Thanks in advance!
Depending on what kind of light output you are going for but using bare bulb will give a large amount of spread throughout the room and throw all shorts or shadows.
MarGal wrote:
...I am contemplating on going bare bulb with the monolights.
It could work if the walls and ceiling are light toned and not an odd color, but you might be wasting a lot of light by sending it in directions that won't help your shots.
If the regular reflector dishes are too concentrated for your desires you might consider small shoot-through umbrellas on the monolights.
I tried the umbrella route for one event to get nice fill of the reception area but it was just an eyesore sitting in the corner. It took away from the decorated room so I took it down about halfway through the reception.
The main problem with going bare-bulb at a reception is the relative intensity of the light very close to the strobe -- if you're shooting toward a bare-bulb strobe, whatever is right beneath it (and if the ceiling is low enough, the ceiling right above it) could be heavily over-exposed compared to the subject.
The reflector allows you to feather and flag some of that light off of the subjects nearest the light: if you aim the light up at, say, 45 degrees, the bottom part of the reflector flags the bulb for the subjects immediately below the light, and the upper part of the reflector bounces some fraction of the light down toward subjects starting, say, 5 or 8 feet away. The ceiling may be blown out, but, hopefully, the part of the ceiling that would be blown out will be closer to you and therefore less often in the frame.
