Everybody trumpets their favorite camera of the year but I didn't read much about everybody's favorite cheap lights last year. Here's my favorite 2019 purchases and my favorite 2020 purchase. Go Lights!!!

Don't you just love it when the box shows up from some photographic retailer and everything inside has arrived without damage? I sure do. I think I buy as many lights in a given year as I do cameras. I rarely get emotionally attached to lights but I'm of the belief that good lighting is as important to many photographs as having the right camera or the hippest lens. I got one box this year and it had my "2020 Electronic Flash of the Year" in it. I know I'm a little early but patience was never my strong suit....

But before I unveil my current champ of low cost lighting for 2020 I'd like to call out my favorite two purchases of 2019.

First up is the Godox SK 400 mark ii. A fancy name for a dirt cheap monolight from a fairly well trusted brand. I bought this in the middle of the year when a set-up shoot on a dark stage with 60 foot ceilings convinced me that modeling lights that would stay on constantly were not a luxury but a mission critical feature when it comes to focusing in dark spaces. No matter how powerful your battery powered flash unit might be pretty much all of those lumens are wasted if your AF won't lock or you can can't see where that point of sharp focus is when manually focusing your image. 

I have three battery powered monolights, each with its own LED modeling light, but the issue with them is that the modeling lights are dim and only stay lit for 30 seconds. I guess it's a battery saving "feature" but it makes using them in dark environments really, really tough. After a bout of guess focusing, and having my assistant stand by one of the lights poking the modeling light button every half minute, I drove to Precision camera to check out the options. The least expensive, but still capable, electronic flash I found was the Godox SK 400 ii. It's got a metal body, allows for a wide range of Godox triggering options, has a 150 watt modeling light, recycles quickly, even at full power, takes Bowens accessories and, best of all, is only $139. I immediately bought one.  I thought it might not stand up to wear and tear but we're going on to about 60 projects on which the SK 400 has been the main light so I think I've already gotten my money's worth out of it, and it still seems pristine and very reliable. It was my best flash purchase of 2019.

The other "Best Cheap Light of 2019" was, without a doubt, the Godox SL 60 W. It's an LED lighting instrument that kicks out 60 watts of clean LED lighting from a COB LED that is about one inch by one inch across, which means it does a much better job giving me hard edges than an LED panel light. This guy also takes Bowens accessories, has a very quiet built-in cooling fan and a very nice LCD read out on the back. You can go from 10% to full power with the nice, big dial on the back of the unit, in very fine little increments, which makes it very easy to control. 

At around $139 for this unit, with a 7 inch reflector and a set of four way barn doors, I was very, very skeptical. I had a hard time believing it would be any good at all. But I thought I'd give it a try and ordered one to try out around the studio. After I had the light for about a week I dragged out the credit card and bought two more of them. They've been wonderful for video projects and when not in commercial use I bounce one off the office ceiling for a nice, soft and color correct office light source. 

I love these lights and love the price even more. Sure, you might need more power for bigger projects, but within their design parameters they do a great job. Especially for the price. Want to stop down more? Lower your shutter speed or turn up your ISO. Godox makes more powerful units but they get big, heavy and expensive pretty quickly and you only gain a stop for every doubling of power and price. I might get one bigger unit but so far I haven't felt the need to progress beyond these bargain bad boys. Easily may favorite continuous light of 2019.

Here's what the back panel of the SL60 W LED light looks like. 

Nice and uncluttered and, yes, you can use it with a supplied remote; though all you 

can do it turn the power up and down. The light is one color temperature= 5600K.

But, that was last year. What have I done for me lately? 

After last year's black floor, black stage, black ceiling set-up shoot fiasco (not to worry, we pulled it off --- by the skin of my teeth...) I decided I needed more cheap studio flashes with built-in, continuous (and relatively powerful) modeling lights so I went to Precision Camera looking for a couple more SK 400 mk2's. End of the year....Inventory in flux....no available stock and no chance of getting the SK's in before the middle to the end of the month. 

So I went home and dialed up the online retailers, knowing I'd be able to source the Godox flash from one of them them. But when I hit the product pages I noticed a new light from Godox that was smaller, lighter and even less expensive than the SK 400ii. In fact, there were two models; the MS300 and MS200, both from Godox. A bit of reading let me know that the model numbers refer to the watt second rating of each light. 

Since the only specification that was different between the two lights was the power rating, and the price difference between the two was a measly $10 I opted to order two of the MS300s. It was ordered from Amazon.com so I figured that if I didn't like something about the lights I could always send them back for a refund. They arrived in nice, well designed (from an aesthetic/advertising perspective) boxes and come only with the body of the flash (with flash tube), the modeling lamp (which you must install), a power cord, and a rugged cover to protect the flash tube and modeling light when traveling. They do not come with a reflector. 

Not to worry, the vendor had a special offer; you only needed to click on the optional reflector and it would included free of charge. 

The construction of the MS300 lights is almost all plastic, including the stand mount and tensioning control for tilting the flash. The receptor ring for Bowens accessories attachment is metal and, honestly, the plastic parts seem like they are well made and will stand up to normal, conscientious use. You won't be able to throw them, unprotected, onto the bed of an old truck but if you generally take care of stuff you'll be fine. 

The lights can be triggered by most of the recent and current Godox radio triggers and some of the triggers (XT-1, for sure) can also be used to control the power settings. If you don't use radio triggers the lights come with built in optical slaves which can be triggered by a separate flash. The modeling light controls allow for manual control, proportional ratio, and off. There's a recycle beep that lets you know when the unit has recycled, but you can turn this off, if it bugs you. At full power it takes about 1.8 seconds to recycle. Not quite as speedy as the SK400 ii but perfectly adequate for most uses.

The one thing the experienced user and beginner of modern flashes alike needs to know, about this model, is that there is no "auto power dump" mechanism. What that means is that when you have the flash set for high power, say, 1/2 power, and you turn it down to a lower power like 1/16th, you'll need to fire a frame or hit the test button to get rid of the excess power in the capacitors. Old timers will remember this from the days of big "pack and head" systems but users of many other modern studio flashes will not be familiar with the idea of "dumping the power" to get to that lower power setting. Many more expensive flashes do this for you automatically as you turn down the power.

So, I ended up with two 300 watt second flash units, complete with internal cooling fans and all the stuff a studio photographer might want, along with two umbrella reflectors for the princely sum of $218. Or $109 each. At this price you could almost consider them disposable. 

MS300 back panel.

big modeling light? check!

Since they don't come in an array of bright, tacky colors and they don't have giant illustrations of insects on the side of the product housings, there's little chance clients will think one way or another about your choice of lights. So long as they keep flashing on command. Three of these would make a great starter kit for a financially struggling photographer while the well-heeled practitioner might even consider them to be "disposable."  Consider this, if this light put your checked luggage over your limit you might be forced to choose between a $109 light or a $140 luggage charge. Leaving the light behind would be $31 less painful. 

My take?

Need some flashes with good modeling lights? Don't want to invest a lot of money?

Start here.

And that's why, unless something more fantastic comes along these pups are already my "Cheap Ass Lights of 2020." 

Obscure and marvelous objects of keen desire. Meter me. Please.

A light meter for the 21st century.

While the photo world pants at the rumor of more and more very similar cameras being readied for the market a lot of really cool stuff is languishing because it's not bling enough for prime time. The Sekonic Pro L-478D light meter is one of these cool stuff devices.  

While light meters seem to have fallen out of favor with most grab and shoot photographers I still carry around two different ones and use them on every shoot that requires me to use lighting.  I wouldn't want to do lighting set ups without one. The one that travels with me everywhere is the tough and hardy Minolta autometer V f.  Like most good meters from last century it reads both flash and ambient light. It's never broken and it takes a double a battery, which makes me happy.

In the studio I depend on my Sekonic L-508 zoom meter. It's a great incident light meter and it also has a built-in in spot meter function that I use, infrequently.  I use both the Minolta and Sekonic meters to measure mostly flash output on white backgrounds but after a bad experience with the rendering of test portraits on the rear LCD of a Nikon D700 I've gone back to making incident readings for every portrait session I do. I've found LCDs on most camera give varying results in varying ambient light environments and it's easy to under expose portraits since the live view or review screens always seem too hot to me.

With two meters in residence at VSL why in the world would I want the L- 478D? Well, mostly because it's so cool. It has features that I think are fun and useful.  I love the big screen and the fact that it's a touch screen. I like the front and center cinematography features and while I probably won't have a use for shutter angle settings as the world of film movie cameras darkens I find being able to set frames per second on the meter a big help when I'm trying to noodle in a good exposure that still hews to proper video technique.

The meter builds on the camera calibration we first say in the L-758 meter and the compulsively detail oriented photographer will have the option of fine tuning the meter and its read out based on actual camera performance.

But why use a separate meter at all? Precisely because we are so subjective when it comes to visual analysis. Most camera LCDs and EVFs show a preview or a review based on the jpeg converted file generated by our cameras, even when we are shooting raw. The exposure latitude of jpegs is much narrower and I've found that camera makers consistently engineer their cameras to err on the side of underexposure in nearly all situations. Even when the image on the screen is big and bright. You can see it plainly if you examine your camera's histogram and compare it with what you are seeing when you look at the same image on the camera's screen. The screen shot looks bold and bright while the (too tiny) histograms almost always have a notch-lette of flat line over to the right hand side.

When I use an incident flash meter, at the subject location, aiming directly back to the camera I generally get readings that are one half to one full stop more aggressive than what my cameras suggest. When I trust the meter I generally get perfectly exposed skin tones and detain in all highlights but I don't get crunched shadows and ruddy transitions from mid tone to dark in portraits.  That alone is enough to keep me using meters for a long time to come.

Where incident light meters really come into their own is aiding in the quick and precise set up of white background studio shots. I meter the background to make sure it's even and I take the incident reading (plus 1/3 stop) as my base for the set up. Then I use the incident light meter with the subject and raise or lower the illumination on the subject until it reads what the background does (before adding the 1/3 stop correction for detail-less white...) and I know I'm where I need to be to have the cleanest, noise free files with the right tonal ranges. Magic.

You're probably able to do much the same process with the reflected light meter in the camera but there's more math involved and the reflectivity of the background materials makes a difference in the accuracy of the metering. 

The reason I want the new is mostly that the new display is much more readable for me than the older, lower contrast, monochrome displays of the older meters. I also like that I can make changes to frequently used parameters on the touch screen rather than having to find the right button and scroll.

The meter uses two triple "A" batteries, which is better than some obscure older camera type battery (I'd prefer one double "A"....).   With included accessories you can use the meter as a reflected one instead of an incident light meter, and, by adding an accessory you can convert the meter into a five degree reflected spot meter.  The meter is highly configurable and offers thirteen different custom settings. It is firmware upgradeable via an USB socket.

Both of my current meters are over ten years old. Buying a new meter happens rarely but they are pieces of gear that I use nearly every day. When I'm shooting with a non-metered Hasselblad they are a constant companion. Now, if I can just get approval from the CFO.....

Continuing in a theatrical and retro vein...While Christmas.

I was shooting in the temporary Zachary Scott photo studio a few days ago and we needed to create a photograph for the musical, White Christmas. This was one of the shots I created and I wanted the lighting and the general feel of the image to harken back to the 1940's when so many images were lit with big, pan reflectors and lots of fill light. Our one formalist constraint was the white background, which became a leitmotif throughout the two days of shooting. To light the actors I used a large dish reflector just to the left of center and a large umbrella fill (one and a half stops down) just to the right of the camera. But, of course, the expressions make the shot for me.  It's always a collaboration.

Later, back in the studio, I was playing around with the image in SnapSeed and ended up with the image below. In retrospect, this is one occasion on which I should have considered a little bit of hair light.  I'll try it next year.

Camera: Sony a77, ISO 160

Lens: Minolta 24-85mm 3.5-4.5

Lighting: Four Elinchrom monolights

White Christmas will open on the stage of the new Theater later this Fall.

Additional information about my Elinchrom lighting adventure....

The last time I wrote to you about lights I'd just dumped a two decade accumulation of Profoto lighting equipment and ventured toward the cheap side of the lighting universe.  I started out with one Elinchrom D-Lite-4 IT monolight and I decided that I liked it.  Pretty well.  It took a while to get used to handling a lighter and less robust lighting machine but the upside was the novelty and the digital controls on the back.

On friday I did my first corporate portrait with three of the D-Lites.  I used one as a main light in a 28 inch Fotodiox Beauty Dish, covered with a diffusion "sock" and feathered quite a bit.  I used a second light into a 60 inch Photek Softlighter with it's diffusion cover and, I used a third light with a couple layers of diffusion over an 8 inch, 50 degree reflector as a background light.

I had all the modeling lights on full and things were zipping along well.  I was shooting quickly and banged off about 35 frames over the course of five minutes.  That's when the fan came on in the fill light/Photek box.  A few minutes later the fan came on in the beauty dish assemblage.  All the lights kept banging away until we finished frame #110.  Then I was done.  The fans ran for a minute or so more and then stopped.  I looked at the frames on my monitor.  Even though I was shooting quickly I got into the pattern of waiting for the recycle "beep" to sound before shooting each frame.  The frames on the monitor were absolutely consistent.

The optical slaves worked fine on the two flashes not connected to the sync cord.

I'm using them again on Monday to make portraits of fourteen people at a medical practice here in Austin. I'll have them up and running for the better part of the day.  That's about it.

By Popular Demand. Behind the scenes stuff. Or, "Does this lens make the photographer look fat?"

Since I posted photos from my shoot yesterday I've gotten dozens of requests for "behind the scenes" shots that would show how everything was positioned.  Fortunately my friend, Amy Smith, was assisting me on the shoot and she kindly provided some behind the scenes coverage.  I hope these will be help you more accurately visualize how I was placing the lights and how it affected the overall look of the shots.  

The first one is a studio shot done with my favorite light source, the big-ass 6 foot by 6 foot scrim.  I'm using a Photoflex frame and one layer of white diffusion. As you can tell I like to use the light source as close in as I can.  I have black panels on the shadow side to make sure that too much bounce from the studio's white walls doesn't fill in too much and degrade the contrast I wanted.  These are quick edits and no,  I haven't edited out fly-away hair, etc.  If the images were heading straight from here to a client we'd  retouch them first.  

While strobes might yield more depth of field and add a bit of sharpness I think you would agree that these images look more cinematic and life like.  Afterall, we chase fast lenses in all the reviews and forums,  doesn't it make sense to use them close to wide open from time to time?  Isn't that why we spent the extra money?

Yes.  You can do this with a small flash.  Really easily.  Almost as easily as just tossing up three small light panels and taking a look through your camera's finder....... Funny.  I worked at color correction and did a custom white balance.  Amy was shooting jpeg and seemed to hit the right WB everytime.  Live and learn.

I call this, "lights on a stick".  Love the wooden tripod.  Goes so well with the tennis shoes.

It's cruel to use small lights without even the tiniest bit of diffusion.  I didn't want anyone to report me for "cruelty to models" so I added some Rosco Luxe to each panel.  I think it's endearing that the little panels I use snap together to make bigger panels.  I have two more coming this week........

I'm no fashion photographer.  That's for sure.  But I kept hearing about clamshell lighting and I thought I'd try my own variation with my LED lights.  I tossed a couple of 500's on the floor, covered with some half stop diffusion and I put the 1000 through a two stop Westcott Fast Flags diffuser and blazed away, screaming, "Pout for me baby and I'll make you a star!"  Or something from "Zoolander".  I can hardly remember......

And guess what?  I had enough light to shoot hand held.  Miracles happen every day.......

That's it for the behind the scenes stuff.  Is this something you want?  Should I post more set up shots?  Just curious.  I'm not really comfortable flashing gang signs, participating is extreme snowboarding and saying "bro" and all the frenetic stuff we see on other blogs.  But I am happy to show you where we put the lights.......