Nuts and bolts. What I'm using for flash photography right now.

the round flash heads of the Godox V1 are perfect for use with a bunch of accessories, like these barn doors, which attach via magnets.

I've used a number of "plug in the wall" electronic flashes in my various studios over the years. These have included: Novatron (dangerous!), Comet, Elinchrom, Norman, Profoto and Godox. There are a few others but they were largely inconsequential. It seems like a lot of brands but you have to consider that these purchases were spread over 44 years. And flash technology kept changing; getting better and safer from time to time. I was probably most invested in Profoto having owned their battery powered Acute Packs for location work, their monolights, and their studio packs. 

Last year, as both part of my desire to radically downsize my lighting inventory and my desire to use more and more LED, continuous lighting, I donated all of my non-battery powered flashes to several deserving and underfunded students who had recently attended photo courses at the local community college. I figured they would need a leg up in today's photo business world. And I was tired of carrying the stuff around a looking for convenient wall sockets. And those fat, 50 foot extension cords I sometimes needed are too much to carry around from location to location on a long shooting day. So, now any flash that needs to plug into a wall socket to operate is long gone. And I'm happy about it.

I am currently following the advice I gave when I wrote my first book way, way back in 2007. I am using portable, lightweight, battery powered flashes. Again. Instead of traditional, big flashes. The most powerful of which is a 200 watt second model. And none of the lights I now use cost more than about $250. I worried I might need more features and power but that worry has passed as I've pressed the lights into service over and over again. 

There was one project that I did in 2018 that really showed me just how much smaller, lighter flashes could improve the experience of traveling to make commercial photographs. It was a multi-day project for Phillips and Jordan which required lots and lots of travel to smaller, rural areas across the USA; mostly on small commuter jets. Once at the location starting point I'd transfer my luggage and gear to a rental car and head for remote areas or wilderness areas where no convenient A/C power existed. Having battery powered units was just a rational choice. 

That Fall I did about 32 flights, shifted in and out of 16 different rental cars, and used just two big flashes (backed up by two V1 flashes). One of which got destroyed on the last day of the project. On every one of the legs of the trip I was solely responsible for transporting the gear every step of the way. A financially sound reason to really work on staying in good physical shape....

The lights I used were the Godox AD200 flashes. They look like black, elongated bricks and can be fitted with a normal looking fresnel head (the standard), a bare bulb flash tube, or a round flash head with a built-in modeling lamp. The flashes work well in conjunction with the Godox line of inexpensive flash triggers and to make them even more effective they are powered by ample lithium ion batteries. With an inexpensive adapter the units can be configured to accept Bowens mount modifiers such as soft boxes or large reflectors. There is even an adapter which allows for two of the units to be combined and work as one more powerful unit (400 watt seconds). And that adapter has its own modeling lights which are much brighter than the ones in the standard heads. (No modeling light capability otherwise with the bare bulb flash tubes).

The flashes yield about 400 full power flashes from a fully charged battery and additional batteries are available for around $60. Seems that two batteries per day per unit are just about enough power to get one through a busy, busy day of shooting outside.

In spite of the fact that the AD200s worked well on locations I kept using traditional wall socket powered flashes in the studio because I needed/wanted strong enough modeling lights to help even the most incompetent auto focus cameras achieve quick enough and accurate enough focusing. I loved those 100 to 150 watt modeling lights. Once I bought the "two units in one" adapter I decided that the modeling light it created was good enough and I could finally achieve separation from cords and the artifacts of the last century. 

I have nine portraits to make in the next week or so. Each one a radiologist from a very large medical practice. All in the studio. I first thought about using the Nanlite LED fixtures I like for continuous light but decided that I'd rather have the subject freezing feature of flash for this very straight forward project instead. 

For this project I am using five lights in total. Six if you count the one strong LED I'm bouncing off the ceiling in order to raise the overall brightness in the studio to get subjects' eyes to stop down a bit and show more color around the pupils. My main light is actually two of the newer model of Godox's AD200, the AD200 Pro, in the dual flash adapter. I chose that pairing because I want to take advantage of the brighter modeling light the combination adapter provides. 

That light combination is used in a Westcott 32 inch Rapid Box (a small octagonal soft box). One of the older AD200s is being used to light up the shadow side of the face and is modified with a soft, 45 inch umbrella. 

I am photographing the doctors in front of a white, seamless background so I don't need to add a back light or hair light but I do like using two more crossed flashes to evenly illuminate the background. I have a pair of Godox V1 flashes (the baby brothers of the AD200s) which have the same kind of round heads and can be used with the same accessories as those of the round heads of the bigger flashes. I've got these set up with small, magnetically attached barn doors on them.

All the lights are controlled by a small and very inexpensive radio trigger, also from Godox. 

I'm always looking for an aperture of f5.6 on the subject's face (two stops less on the shadow side) and f5.6+1/3 on the background. This puts the power requirements for the main lights at 1/8th power, the fill light at 1/64th power and the background lights at 1/32nd power. Basically, it means we could do thousands of flashes without needing to recharge --- if we wanted to. 

While I have signed on to do nine portraits they are not arriving in one efficient cluster. I am scheduling their time with me individually. One on Thursday afternoon, another on a Saturday, etc. I want to maintain consistency in the project but I also like to move the lights out of the way and experiment on other projects. What I decided to do, in this case, is to mark the floor with blue painter's tape at each light or subject position with a notation about the power setting, etc. This way I'll be able to move the lights to one side and do different portraits for myself using the new LED fixtures. It makes putting the portrait lights back into position highly repeatable. More efficient. To put it crassly it makes the whole project more cost effective. More profitable.

I've also narrowed down to one camera and one lens. Of course it's the Leica SL because its 24 megapixel raw files are easier to handle than the bigger files from the SL2 or the medium format camera. And the files look wonderful. I'm pairing that camera with the Leica 24-90mm lens because it's pretty much flawless and at f5.6 the details derived are endless.

I like C-Stands in the studio. They look cool and they are STURDY. 

This is a Godox V1 with a flash reflector attached via magnets.

The flash reflector is meant to combine direct flash with flash bouncing off a 

white ceiling but I use it here as a convenient light blocker for the background. 

I don't want any direct spill on the subjects. 

The older AD200 (original, classic, collectors item) into a 45 inch, white umbrella.

Two AD200 Pro light with bare bulb tubes firing together into the Rapid Box.

SL plus X1T trigger plus 24-90mm zoom. 

Fill light. Love umbrellas. So cheap but so useful.

A different view of the combined AD200Pro lights.

handsome model with Sigma fp camera and 45mm lens. 

Had lunch with an engineer friend (and fellow swimmer) today. We talked about swimming and travel experiences but mostly a lot about Epi-graphene tech and how it relates to semiconductor development. The future arrives right on schedule. Now --- who will get Eli-graphene based semiconductors to market first? And what is their stock symbol?

Didn't get around to the idea that consciousness all stems from one universe wide quantum wave. That's next time...