It hasn't been a big problem for us. Since we introduced WL Ultra in 1986 it has been copied or emulated a zillion times by Americans, Europeans and Asians. But I find that if we stay out in front with new innovations that it takes several years before the copies take hold in the marketplace.
Fortunately for us, this is a niche market and copying doesn't occur at the pace it does in consumer industries.
The biggest problem the Asians face is that they build a dozens of different versions and haven't learned how to market or communicate with US customers. I know some here think I am a marketing fool, but our customers like what we do.
lafashionphoto wrote:
sweet! And silver Beauty dish? When?
We will probably be shipping toward the end of this week - they're in air freight right now. I'm going to try to do some test shots in the next two days. I can tell you now it has a 40° smoothly feathered pattern and puts out f16 + 3/10 at 10' with 320WS ISO100.
With the sock and no light shield it's extremely even - much more so that classic white BD. Around f8+8/10 (a guess) and very wide angle like conventional BD.
I'm going to try to find some really thin diffuser material - gauze like, so you can just soften it a tad and get maybe a 60-70° beam. But getting fabric samples from China or getting them to understand what you want is like pulling teeth.
blob loblaw wrote:
I think I sense where failure to communicate could lie.
There's a difference between Marketing and PR (Public Relations)
your
Marketing = :-)
PR = :-\
Marketing = customer relations, PR = image among non-customers. Who cares when the customer base and satisfaction and image keeps increasing and non customers are shrinking?
Is the black spill kill fabric easily stackable / attachable over the white diffuser fabric for the silver umbrella units? I could do some soft selective lighting then.
oncoming wrote:
Is the black spill kill fabric easily stackable / attachable over the white diffuser fabric for the silver umbrella units? I could do some soft selective lighting then.
If you are referring to the removable black back cover that comes with the translucent (shoot through) versions of the PLM, it isn't necessary with the silver versions as they are already black backed.
No, let me clarify. Joe McNally did a shoot in the desert where he covered the bottom half of the umbrella to not spill light onto the sand at the bottom of the scene and control the umbrella to only illuminate the top half of the scene, adding light only to the subject.
So I'm looking to add the black cover over the diffuser to control light spill with the bonus of using the diffuser under it to soften people even more.
oncoming wrote:
No, let me clarify. Joe McNally did a shoot in the desert where he covered the bottom half of the umbrella to not spill light onto the sand at the bottom of the scene and control the umbrella to only illuminate the top half of the scene, adding light only to the subject.
So I'm looking to add the black cover over the diffuser to control light spill with the bonus of using the diffuser under it to soften people even more.
Light from the top half will still project down. One advantage of the Silver PLM is that, if aimed properly, it tends at illuminate the foreground way less than wider angle modifiers and this problem is automatically taken care of.
Make Color Correction "Gels" that fit like the strobe caps (or something similar) that come with the WL strobes and still allow for the connection of soft boxes. Dealing with softboxes and color correction is a nightmare for me..something simple would be a godsend.
