Lighting 101 Part 2 (First in Stack)

Here is the studio setup for the image form Yesterday in Part 1. You can see the two Elinchrom's (left key and right fill) with the speedlite for the background. On the tri-pod is my Canon 5d Mk II with an interesting combination mounted on the hot shoe

First the key light. I have the Alien Bees 42 inch parabolic light modifier (their words) which is the smaller of the three they sell that I have that fits a Bees B800 strobe. The reflector that works best with the PLM obviously does not fit the Elinchrom. Being Swiss, neither does the shaft of the umbrella. Intuition to the rescue!

First i take some gaffers tape and secure the reflector to the Elinchrom. There is a hole in the reflector that allows the umbrella shaft to go through o the mono-light but I would not be needing that because it doesn't fit anyhow.

So I take the Elinchrom and put it in a Photoflex Grip Swivel to provide tilt and support for the umbrella. Normally the mono light will be tilted with the light modifier from its base but here I simply tilted the mono light towards the center of the umbrella and then used the grip swivel to tilt the whole unit. I like this option but will get a reflector that actually fits.

Now for the coup d'etat on control over the lighting. There is no standard in light triggering in photography but there is one 2000 pound gorilla, That being Pocket Wizard. The Plus II (shown at right) is just a dumb transceiver that will work every single time. If it doesn't or you didn't turn it on or the battery is dead which could be from not turning it off the last time you used it. Then there are all the others. Elinchrom has the Skyport system which is very controllable so you don't have to have an assistant running around the studio adjusting light power all the time which saves time and money. But how can you get them to work together.

Normally you need two Plus II's to make the whole Pocket Wizard thing work but I also have their E-TTL (MiniTT1 and FlexTT5) systems (here is the link) to fire my Speedlites. The MiniTT1 (camera unit) will allow a speedlite to be mounted to it as well as fire Plus II in dumb mode. With this in mind I thought I would try something Elinchrom or PocketWizard did not intend to happen. I put the Elinchrom Skyport in the hot shoe of the MiniTT1 and then mounted the whole thing on the hot shoe of the 5D Mk II.

It worked like a champ, I had full selective control over the Elinchrpom heads while firing the speedlite from the Plus II.

Hey, that was a lot of fun, but I am getting a here. Have a great weekend and we'll be back monday.

Cya... Doug