Location portraits with flash: Joe in Omori

Flash photography portraits: testing out some strobes with Joe

My eldest son and I took an hour out of yesterday to go test out some strobes, shooting around the neighbourhood.

I recently picked up a couple of older Bowens flash heads. I’d used Bowens in the past and had a few accessories with their S-fit [reflector dishes, a snoot, some grids] so Joe and I headed around the corner to shoot a few test shots. The flashes are fired by Photix Ares triggers.

Here’s a few shots made using the reflector dish, a couple of different grids [10 and 30 degree] and a snoot. All were shot on the Nikon with a 28-85mm zoom.

We then dropped the Bowens back at the house and headed back out with an Elinchrom A-Head run off of the Quadra Ranger battery pack, which I currently have from a friend who is asking me to sell the two-head kit for him. I’ll post something shortly, with pics of the kit, but it has two A-Heads, the Quadra Ranger pack, two batteries and I will have the ring-flash and a couple of soft-boxes for it soon. The whole kit is for sale. Very nice lights. Drop me a line if you are interested in buying them.

The A-Head is tiny and fits on top of my monopod easily, giving one a rig that can very easily be carried for making superb location portraits. The heads, although tiny, are 600WS each. Very powerful for such small gear.

We made the following shots using the Nikon, 28-85mm lens and just one A-Head fitted on top of the monopod… giving me a light that I can get up to about 9-10ft high and nicely angled down. We tried a few with and without a grid which I’d jerry-rigged to go on the light head.

These were shot monochrome in-camera and are straight out of the Nikon. Here you see with and without grid…..

joe-www-grid-no-gridHere’s a few more, shot with the same lighting setup: one Elinchrom A-Head, on monopod, with and without grid.

The Elinchrom kit for sale includes:

  • 2x A-Heads
  • Quadra Ranger Control Unit
  • 2x Lead Gel Batteries
  • Cables and connectors
  • EL-Skyport Wireless Trigger
  • Elinchrom RQ Ringflash
  • 2x Softboxes for the A-Heads

If you are interested in finding out more about the Elinchrom, price etc… drop me a line.

Thanks.