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FAQ for Purchasing Studio Light Part 3

If I can have just one modifier which won for sure yeah, and so that depends on what you shoot and well, I I'm standing in front of you as the authority everybody had you know what I mean? Like I've given you my opinions on this, but honestly everybody does have a different opinion based on what look you're going for like what aesthetic you like? So I'm giving you my generalized you just want a piece of gear that a function for the type of photography you do. I'm going to give you my recommendations and there's variations on this, but if you do portrait and head shots and you could only have one modifier, I would get a threesome octo box or three but four foot soft about a soft box the off the box would be if I'm in a small space or with really low ceilings because it's harder if I start raising it up with really low ceilings if I have a bigger soft bus has less control so the three foot now it's a little bit a little bit smaller I can get it up higher and then I could use filled to co...

ntrol the shadows instead of having a bigger soft box where it's filling from beneath whether I want to or not so if I have a smaller space and usually going more for the three foot than the three by four foot the great place to start next one down newborns, newborns of course, I'm sure there's different styles, but in general you want really broad wrapping light that looks like a window most of time. That's the quality so you want a big soft box three by four foot or larger or a big shoot through umbrella. A larger shoes have not a small one, but larger because then it starts acting like a soft blocks, so that might be a good place to start, because generally umbrellas are less expensive than soft boxes, so if you're just trying it out, that might be a consideration. The next one for groups. I'm not talking about huge groups, but a mitt like the group that I have here from my audience, you would want either a larger octo box or a large umbrella would fusion and I might go with the umbrella with diffusion because it is less expensive and it's easier to collapse when you have a five foot off the box. If you were trying tio, tear it down every time we moved with it, it's it's kind of a pain. So an umbrella like we had yesterday silver where the diffusion will act like a soft bucks, but you wanted you wanted to be bigger. It's gonna have to be depending on the size your group like at least forty inches. But if you can if you have the space for a big one like we had yesterday, I would try that. And then if you do fashion and beauty photography, I would recommend a beauty dish twenty inches and white says if I could recommend one modifier depending on the type of photography you d'oh that's super super helpful we do have some questions online as well as go ahead and start. What about a ring light? Okay, so bring lights are cool, especially for fashion photography. What they do is they can you can have strobe ones that actually fought fire or they could be constant fluorescent and they're just a tube that is round and what it does is it gives you really flat frontal light that's glowing and really cool catch lights in the eyes. The problem is that's all they d'oh I think that's really much all you can use them for it's cool and it's stylized what's nice is there's one company called stellar lighting systems that makes a ring light it's like two hundred dollars so it's really inexpensive solution, but that's it very much one way you would want exactly, because because then at least with the octo box I could use it for a newborn if I had teo and with the octo box I could do a group if I backed it up it's one be ideal or for soft lots and I can mix and match that ring like just as its ring lighting that would be that would more to me be like your seventh modifier a third I have one and I have but I have like a billion so yeah I seem to do a lot more groups than normal but at the same time I also you headshots and whenever that five foot octo would work as long as I have the room to head wise right you can do it it just your life is pretty much always going to be soft you're if you're getting one modifier you're not going to be able to make it really dramatic if you have a five foot doctor box you've got on lee so much you can do but it always looks good on the skin. Can I ask you a couple more scenarios for that? Like what would one modifier b s o clarification for sofia is when you say portrait's does that count as head shot and full body when we talk about that first one the three foot doctor sure so for a three foot doctor box you can't exactly you can but you don't really get even illumination had to tell if I want a full length fur, they're evenly illuminated. I have to pull the octo box back far enough to allow the light to spread out like the bucket of water. It starts to be less soft when I do that, but there's a balance that if you really try to pay attention the light, you know, if I'm two feet away, I'm not going to let her feet, but if I'm like four, five, I'm starting to light more full length and it's still pretty soft. My question to you is, and I get this question as how important it is it that the feet are lit? I mean, is it actually important to that photograph that they be bright? If it's not, then bring it closer and you can shoot it like that. We'll talk more about lighting head to toe shots tomorrow for my ten common lighting problems, but, yeah, you could use that feeling great. Thank you couple more if you don't mind people who are this is from stupor, man, what would your men we recommend for a product and food photography? We were talking about this. Yeah, for a product photography, soft boxes, squares or hard boxes, hardage boxes, because on products you're looking for the highlight and and around the highlight really looks good like in a blind bottle or something like that. But just before the class started we had this same conversation so for product go with rick direct tangles or squares and when I and this is not be well it's actually relatively versatile but there's something called a scrim you might want to look up if you do product photography it's basically a big diffusion panel on a frame and then you move your light around and up and down in the distance of that scream to your subject and it all makes different effects so does not even technically it's a modifier but it's it's not going to stick on your light and it gives you a lot of different capabilities to featured a lot of products that might be going to play with and the one that I use is the westcott scrim jim but I mean you could even make something make shift to try it out yourself to begin with which I think is a great name the scrim jim yeah, I think you'll like it and if that is something that you are doing actually just the product and food photography we definitely have classes that are specifically and go way further into detail about that particular subject so a lot to get there and you can search our catalog can I ask you one more than okay so can you please make a recommendation for action? Studio studio actions shot on high key, so this person has no batons that are aging and just recently purchased for alien bees, but is a little concern that it won't keep up. So if you're trying to get those movement and dancing shots in the studio, I mean that's not really a modifier question per se, but I think what I think would be the best solution. Well, it's for fist and the fact that last pledge duration to stop action, but you want to fast recycled time, so maybe even if, like we said with the stuff box where you can put two heads in it, so you get twice the amount of power with the same recycle time, you could put two half and half power and get a full power output in two and a half to recycle times that weighs a way of doing it and related to that. So so how is this playing as well? Is if you have minimal output, if you're getting if you have, like, a one sixty, what? How many seconds isn't think various one right? So you have what you have, but you released him with the bees? Oh, yes, it depends on the alien because you want ideally would have picked the ones with more output because then you don't have to use them at full power because that full powers where the recycle time takes longer and that becomes a problem for action did they say they had multiple alien bees for yes techem you can lower the power and get more I'll put it with the word fester recycle speeds cool. All right, thank you, let's go. I think so. Here is this a picture of what I was talking about? Because I didn't want to fill up the space again with all those modifiers but when I was talking about a three foot or five dr box and octo boxes a soft box that is shaped like an octagon ah three by four foot or four by six foot soft box rectangular again was one of the things they recommended for portrait shoot through umbrella just looks like a semi translucent white ish umbrella but you actually shoot through it it doesn't reflect intuit it points this top part points at your subject. Okay, then we had the beauty dish I mentioned about twenty inches and white and then lastly we talked about this yesterday and this is the one that john had in his studio when he photographed me does really you know your desert island thing you can take one white modifier with you would be the foe texts off leiter the sixty inch because it's a regular umbrella you can take the black off it and use it as a shoot through umbrella and you can put the diffuser on it and be like a soft box and I think it's about one hundred thirty bucks and you could put any light into it it doesn't use the speed ring but it goes on an umbrella shift yeah and so it is literally umbrella soft box shoot through like all in one so I would take a look at that and then faux ticks makes one that's same concept yeah it might be going back to my old question but quality of that versus the west got one there thirty dollars difference is there a reason you pay that is it build quality difference well well after that the shift on the folk text off light and learn about the faux ticks you'll see there's not a big chef coming out the shift actually on screws so you can bring it up so it becomes a sixty inch octo box except it has ten panel so it's I say it's an octave that goes to ten yeah I like that but that's where we talked about not fitting all white heads though because ellen chrome needs a seven seven millimeter shift this has an eight millimeter chef so they can on screw so it won't fit into some l a crowd heads but almost every other brand it should fit so what this means to you guys even though you think that all umbrellas work with everything, they don't, so just check the millimeter the science that got my for the pro photo once it's right on the head itself is where you put the umbrella other ones it's actually an adapter on the bottom of what they can be different sickness even though you think and they're like a million which is annoying their millimeter difference and which is the weird one? Outcomes only promises a smaller has a smaller opening in the flesh heads so just to give allen crawl know that you need to get the seven hundred yeah, I remember running into that once where I was like, how is this possible that an umbrella isn't universal. Okay, okay. All right, next one pack and head or mono block. So what does this all mean? So packing head is the more traditional route or this is what has existed forever. When I went to college, this is what we had in college. And what it means is the pack itself is where all the juice exists. It's where all the water all the power is in the pack. You change everything from the pack you're changing the output of the strobe from the path here change I mean, whatever you're going to change in control is right there and then the head is just what flashes and you put the modifier on that. All right? So I'm going to tell you about the pros and cons of thes one of the things that is a different thing model block is first, so a lot of black, also known as mono light everything self contained you don't need a pact to plug into. So these pro photo d ones, those are model lights, you don't need anything extra. All right? So some differences here if you get a five hundred watt second model, like when that light fires you can have up to five hundred watt seconds of output when you get a pack, there are there could be multiple heads that khun go in one pack, you could attach multiple lights to one of those pack power sources when you have multiple heads that four hundred, five hundred watts is split up between them, so each head is no longer five hundred watt seconds. There would be you could make it to fifty. I'm not. This is less of a button kind of class because each set up is different, but when you look at the different packs, they have something where you could make them symmetrical meaning. If you have two heads, each one has equal power or you could put it at a two to one ratio, so one is going to be twice as bright as the other, and that is all something you control from the pack when we tell you the pros and cons, in my opinion of these systems and especially well, especially for beginning, photographers usually mano lights or the better solution on one of the reasons they do tend to be less expensive. But I'm going to compare kind of the pros and cons one of the benefits off mano lights. And this is something that I struggled with, and I'm not sure if you find this a hassle, but I found this a hassle is ok, so let's say you've got a pack and I already told you, you can plug two heads into it. What I found very difficult was getting the amount of control independently because I knew like there was one, but in, depending on what pack is a fight turned it up, they both get brighter. But what happens if I just wanted the left one and and been trying to figure out when I split it, okay, what I did to tow one which how much more like was that? A little bit amount I turned it up dividing it like I found it more difficult to control them independently and it required me to do a lot more mass and sinking than just look I'm turning this one up and turning this one down it's much harder to control the ratios and power output independently similarly to that is when you've got a power pack and plugging the two lights into a power pack what happened if I want one light here and one light all the way over here a lot of times I have all these cords that I'm tripping over because I've got to put the power pack in a place that can reach both and then all of a sudden if I'm trying to boom this arm out and I've got you know I've got one of the court's hanging in front of me and so it just tended to be a little bit more of a hassle so I recommend mano lights just because it's easier to learn it's simpler to handle and it's easier to control the independent outputs but this is more like if you really want to get into the pros and cons are definitely reasons that packs air good generally impacts you can get faster recycle times so if you're shooting a lot of action like and so the person that originally had the nova trans is mean there's actually if they were old there's actually should have better recycle times for packs another awesome reason is these one of the pro photo had another all attached okay they're actually relatively heavy amano late in itself which becomes a problem when you have a light boomed out way over your subject because then you're really worrying about stability and I remember I wrote the sense of audio I wrote this down somewhere these in this light is actually on the lighter and it's not not too heavy but imagine you've got this going to make you hold that harry okay but then you put a big soft box on and it's boomed out over here now you're worried about okay I got to put the sandbags in the right place and I've got a balance out the wait where is when it's a pack and head it weighs almost nothing in the head it was much easier to manipulate and so thank you if I know that I'm going to have a really complicated set up with lights boomed out over the subject's head right above their head I'd rather just have ahead then this whole thing for safety purposes so you've got that benefit thank you perfect all right so just to summarize real quick model blocks some of the benefits no heavy pack especially if you're traveling around with these a lot somebody asked me yesterday about going to different people's houses you wanted to keep your set up simple without a lot of gear well, a package is another thing to carry and they generally weigh a bit model blocks there easy tio independently control they're usually less expensive of course there's use gear or certain brands that you could get cheaper package heads but moderates tend to be less expensive over all the downsides is the heavy head the sore recycle time more or less that benefits the pack late we had improved recycle time this is gives you like and overall when you're deciding I think mono lights are probably the way to go for someone just starting off so how about you get questions so far we do have some questions about with with the mono lights do they always have to plug in or is there any battery powered mano like sure so there are mono lights that do not have to plug in but then their battery operated and so I will this is number nine I think so I will show you the brands and the options that you have available to you there's more than I'm going to list but the ones enlisting are more popular and so that would probably get to the question of can you use mano lights on location? Yes you just have to power them but the same thing ah power pack is not a battery ah power pack well, there are some that are but a power pack still has to plug into the wall what it's doing is acting as the capacitor is monitoring all the output monitoring the recycled time is monitoring what? What power is going to each head so it's kind of the brain of the whole system where is the head is just the strobe but it's still gotta plug into the wall, actually a battery that you can pick up and take outside unless you buy one like the bron color move kit, for example that it's a pack and it's ahead but it's also a battery and then there's uh we'll get to the b one's later called example number seven what system do I buy to trigger my strobes? Not really a right or wrong answer for these. And put this up just to say sing chords air like the cheapest it'sjust accord that hooks into hooks into on mine is someplace in the bottom of the light, but and it plugs into your camera, but as anything where it's an extra cord it's, another thing to trip on, and a lot of people I have heard in the past have had problems because when they step on or yank it out, it actually ruins the sink connection. So after doing that repeatedly over and over again now it doesn't even work, so you can't even use this in court, a perfect he has one so I use these and I thank you I don't actually know what that costs I vote they always come with what I'm with the floor she would come with the flashes I keep these around always for when technology fails like there's, I run out of batteries for my other triggers or I lost them or as usually happens with me I dropped something like that so I keep them around. This is like the hardwire non non digital way of making your strokes fire it's just there's another court on the way to trip on. And another thing with sinclair is there with some builder packs told older speed of charms and no veterans they have a high sink voltage. You know, when the when the camera shutter closes, it sends a little voltage between this in some digital cameras can get damaged by it, so pretend to not use the chords of impossible now. Yeah, there's one other thing that reminded me up if you ever if you happen to like somebody has a really inexpensive power pack and heads that they give you and that's great it's a great way to get started. I just want to mention this because I did this one is you need to make sure you have everything unplug and the power dumped before you take the head out of the pack because I it's loud and I thought blues are of of in that would that would have been painful. I didn't actually do it, but long story short just out of safety when you're unplugging and moving things like turn everything off or and dumped the power beforehand to find a way that you know, that there's not electricity, running in it, because that would be awful. I didn't actually get hurt, but it made for an adrenaline rush for almost a day once played with it wasn't me, it was that someone standing next to me pulled the plug out of a belle carter really old nineteen sixties arab box and just the loud bang unjustly, well, mine was a speedy trial that I did in college. I pulled it out and I was just like it's, impressive looking that's about the extent of it. The next way that you can trigger your strobes is something called optical, and on the back of many of you're strobes, you'll see something that says optical might say like slaves, exactly. So what that means is, when it sees something flash, it will flash as well, and it will work in your exposure is not like it's a delay that won't show up, it'll still flash light is very, very fast you don't have to worry about it often would I d'oh is I have a trigger and this is not with my pro photos, but when I'm not using pro photos I have a trigger that somehow sets off one like so I have one trigger set and then I said the rest on optical so I don't have to buy additional receivers additional pieces to make it fire. The downside is if you were shooting at a wedding or a reception or any place where people have flash on their camera because it doesn't care what flash is firing it could see an iphone flash and fire and the downsides of that are a people are stealing your light you know, at a wedding for example, but the other side of it is especially if you have a less expensive brand if they fired it and it fired and you went to shu it might not have recycled in time or the color might be off, so you just kind of use it with caution but running down you may most flesh is that runoff batteries get about two hundred, two hundred fifty fleshes per battery charge, so you want all this pleasures for yourself? Thank you, yeah, no thanks perfect sense there are some downsides besides that also depending on distance sometimes like if you're really far away and the light is behind a pole, it doesn't see it like just the way that the late was pointed so I was doing a demonstration ones where all they gave me was one trigger and one light with the trigger, so everything else was supposed to fire doesn't sound like a problem I'm definitely no one else should be taking pictures of flash the problem was, is I had a grid on my main light, so the grid on my main light means where the light was going was just on the subject's face and other lights weren't firing and they're supposed to be there on optical it's because no light was going anywhere that's what agreed does a grid focuses it all in one direction? So there are downsides like that, and then you've got to get creative. I don't know if you've ever done like in the situation like like where it's not seeing I've seen people try to build like catchers next to the boil, the tin foil next to the sensors don't it's just kind of a hassle, so no, if it works or if it doesn't ms keel over there's there's I are there certain ways that it's infrared it's actually triggered by line of sight. It will be a trigger that sends out an infrared pulse, and it has to be detected by either the strober that trigger itself, but the one that is the most professional, most reliable would be ready some sort of radio transmission they you can also get radio transmission ones that can actually change the power output of the strobes from the trigger so instead of having to constantly go change everything, you change the power outputs right from that remote control right from that trigger the one that I had I talked about yesterday and I have a slide of it honey public so this is what I have on my camera right now it is specifically made for the pro photo lights einstein has one specifically made and what is a funny name? So I guess cyber sink I think it's because they have one specifically made for and generally the ones that are made by that brand give you more capabilities like I know that one gives you and like hyper sink capabilities for one of the things that's not one o one I'm just telling you it exists, but I have the ability to separate things into channels and into groups all right? Why does that matter? Why would I need it? Why would you need to buy a trigger? That is more than that. If you do event photography of some sort anyplace where another photographer would be set up, you definitely need the ability to separate things into channels because what that means is let's say you've got just the generic trigger that's just firing by strobe or just firing on channel one if they're over there shooting and you're like why the hacker my lights firing I don't see anyone else shooting it's because their signal it might be triggering your strobes so what you khun dio is channel basically puts you on a different wavelength and it says ok, there they're over there on one I'm going to go to two or three so if you're shooting a lot of events or for example, if you do maybe like the press release events where you're shooting head shots of a band or oven author or that type of thing you're going to be other photographers around, you're going to want to able to do for different channels so channels they're basically what you use to separate yourself from other people there are other uses for it but that would be my simple explanation whereas the groups are my way to control each strobe independently from the trigger of my own. So this one I consent to a that when I consent to be that when I consent to see and then right here on my uh trigger on a aiken click to increase the energy and then I can click to be and say he was too strong I'm going to decrease the power so I can control everything which becomes really important when you're short and you don't want to keep moving your life every time you change it that's that's one of the main reasons I use it but also if the whole idea is you keep connected with your subject and you have to constantly keep going back and changing the light you lose that connection you lose your momentum so that would be a reason that you might upgrade to a system with these capabilities. Um let's see, there are some inexpensive trigger options that are totally fine if you just want to make sure your flash is firing and they do have some other options for groups and channels so some of the inexpensive ones would be the cactus transceiver I've heard talk to ivan use this I talked to a ton of people I took a poll and which is why one of the reasons I love social media they put up on facebook and I said, listen guys, you know, I've been chained to a photo for a while now, so I really just used a lot of the d one air remote and then I've used pocket wizards what else out there exists? And I got lots of good reviews for the cactus transceiver and then another one there's a faux ticks areas trigger system which you need something on your camera to send a signal to something on one of the lights so that's what you have to keep in mind as well it's it's not just like it magically talks to whatever like you have you've got to plug something into this light so that there's something to send a signal to the light to fire you have any favorites? Ok look the fuse pocket with this so when you want more capabilities kind of one of the industry standards is pocket wizards they just cost more money and there's a lot more you can do with them to control the lights independently there's also something fancy for the ability this is a question yesterday the ability to go faster then your sink speed there's a way to get pocket wizard certain ones where you can exceed your sink speed by the way it works is called hyper sink not a one on one thing but it exists I personally don't think for a one on one photographer and studio that you need a setup like this you just need something to make your strobes fire and these were a couple hundred or several hundred each so maybe one of the less expensive systems would be a good place to start and there are even like twenty dollars things that just trigger one like that's what I had I had heard it micro sink or micro something I had one of these things that's that's what it's called okay where it was just a little sitting on top of my hot shoe the trigger goes on your hot shoe and then I plugged into the back of my uh the black of the strobe the problem is, with wearing terror, I ended up having tio gaffer's tape it down onto my camera so that the connections would hold. So when you buy an expensive, you get inexpensive, so it's just being aware of kind of that element, so can I use speed lights for studio lighting? Just speed like, so, I mean, you can treat them like studio lighting, but if you need to make do, like get, you can do it. But there's a lot of weaknesses or there's, a lot of lack of control and so here's some of the things that that air the downsides. Generally, speed lights have slower recycle times if you're trying to kick out a lot of power. So, you know, if you've ever used a speed light where you have it turned up to full power and it flashes and it goes and you have the weight, whereas I'm working with studio strobes means ready to shoot so I can catch action. And after the subject, we're not waiting on my speed light to refill for groups they depending. On what speed light. First a strobe you have. Sometimes they have less power output, so you probably struggle toe light groups, you need several of them, which, at that point, you could buy a strobe but maybe you have six seven speed lights at that point if you have a bunch of writers will use them that's fine, but usually it's not gonna have enough power output there's also fewer modifiers there are adapters to make all these different modifiers kind of work with speed lights but they're not really made for it. And there's there's two reasons why if you do want to see modifier specifically made for speed lights that mimic studio lighting gear, check out pro photo are sorry proper checkout westcott and faux techs for example faux ticks has something called the faux ticks luna, which is a beauty dish made for speed lights. It has a little bracket so you can treat it like a baby dish. Uh the other reason why that it doesn't really work is flash heads are really small like the front of them are small and what we said yesterday is smaller light source relative to the subject more harsh the light okay, so it's going to be harsher just to begin with? And then what happens is when you take a speed light and try to light a big soft blocks it just doesn't feel the soft box it will still give you a hot spot in the center and so really even though I've got a three by four foot soft box, the light source sitting my subject is still not that big didn't have enough size of the head to spread out and give me a nice big, soft, even light source so it doesn't it doesn't quite have the same please in qualities, but it was really interesting because joe mcnally did a block post that I saw at one point where he took to portrait identical one was with a speed light and one with his with the strobe trying to figure out which one was which I couldn't quite tell but he also picked soft light source really closely he picked things that would trick you whereas you know if I wanted to use a big giant soft box for really broad light really, really soft wrapping light I would need multiple speed lights it wouldn't really quite work the same so that's kind of a downsize and then also a huge one for me is that speed lights don't have a modeling like so I'm trying to look for lighting patterns and sculpt the lead in the face you saw yesterday it was using it a lot like I have just moved her head to take it from rembrandt toe loop I don't have that anymore and also if you're shooting a lot with strobes where they're on full power through modifiers you can overheat them a lot more quickly than you would get with a strobe so you do damage to your gear more quickly no s o if you get the presentation, this broke down what I just said it's all in there but, you know, like a benefit of a speed light. If you already own them, you already on them. And if you're going on location, you really need portability. That might be an easier later. Wait. Solution most of time, that stroke, you're gonna be a better choice. Okay. Number nine is, can I? Dual purpose studio and location gear. Can I buy something that I can take out on location? Not need to plug into a wall so I can use it for my location lighting. I can use it at somebody's house report. Should I can use it in my studio and the answer's? Yeah, but these were your three options. You can buy battery packs, that's. One option so I can actually buy a battery pack that these mono lights or whatever model lights instead of plugging into the wall, they plug into the battery pack and they suck from the battery pack so you can do that. All right, next one is portable strokes in the studio. You could buy strobes that are intended to shoot on location and just shoot them in your studio, and then you just have to keep changing the batteries, they wouldn't be plugged into the wall. And then there are strobes that can plug into the wall in the studio but feed off of a battery when you take them their own battery when you take them out on location so those all three options doing exist so depends on which one of these system looks most enticing to you and which is the right price point. So give you a couple examples one that a lot of people use is a policy buff products and it's like incredibly good price a couple hundred dollars, three hundred dollars or something um depending which when you get and there's a vagabond lithium it is just a big battery and if you look it has the same outlets, the same plugs you'd have on the wall. So as long as you have a monolith that can plug into a wall, you can plug it into this battery and it's pretty lightweight and it could come with you wherever you go. Some downsides of it is if you have ah higher wattage light, those recycle times are brutal. I think if you're shooting at like for some reason a thousand watts second light you're shooting a group and you use it at full power it could be several seconds before it recycles like the statistics are on the site but it could be like four seconds five seconds before it gets back up to full power even more than that but if you're shooting with lower power in alien b and you plug it in there pretty awesome this is what I used when I had my small studio I would take my weight lightning's my alien bees out on location with a bag of on this is their new one they came out with a new one and these they're better than their old ones and they weigh less another one is faux ticks came out with a light that how it works is in the studio it plugs into the wall on location it plugs into its own battery pack I tested it out and I thought it was pretty cool so it might be something that you'd like and they have you convey by different it's not that it's really different attachment so you can use different modifiers on it but by default I think it's a bowen's modifier other one is pro photo be ones this is what I use what they are is they are basically the same unit like as the d one that looked the same they function the same but they run off of this battery that's where all the power exists so I don't need to plug it in the wall I don't need a pack I don't need anything extra I just go out on location I could shoot that in the studio and on location to switch the battery this one's expenses though I think it's like two thousand for one head, so maybe for someone first starting off that might not be what you want, but if you're looking for a solution where you just plan on buying one light to use in the studio and in location that would cover both of your bases and so each one of these solutions has, you know they're pros and cons this is recycled time can't pull as much power this you given us to see if you like the light itself, this one's more expensive s o number ten to ramp up this ten most commonly asked what stuff do I buy? Section purchasing questions is what other stuff do I need? Because I know when I first set up there I'm always fumbling around as missing things, so here just a couple of things to be aware of that help you run a studio and grip and gear grip is like group is more the stuff to set up your studio where his gear is actually like the studio heads if you hear the word grip. All right, so we talked about speeding already, so we already touched on this don't need to go into it too much more gaffer's tape is the best thing ever what it is it's very, very strong tape that you can use for everything, but it doesn't leave a residue which is really important if you're using it on lights because you don't want to have that residue there so then it gets us tacky and also it doesn't burn like its heat resistant I use it tio cover up when I have a set and I have cords running across the set if you're photographing children and you've got cord running around, you're definitely going to want to use gaffer's tape to tape down that court so they can't trip over it, protects them and protect so gaffer safe is expensive it is much more expensive than duct tape or electrical tape it's not the same thing is electrical tape it's totally different? You'd have to get at theater supply or it at aram online or wherever it may be or at your local camera store s so you definitely want to get a rule of that for sure you might want to get a couple clamps of some sort these you can get at home depot lowe's wherever I always use these their names a clamp because it's an a and c clamp because it's see in case someone mentions it, I use these all the time too you can see the big ones up there to hang the backgrounds up instead of having to have an extra polls I'm just like right now we're using one poll there's a white background behind it and then we draped the background in front, instead of having to switch it, I can just rape it and flip it over. I'll use it to clamp clothing, I'll use it the whole hold a piece of foam core or reflector to a stand, so definitely get some clamps for sure. Sure, the super clamp excellent thiss make use many places, you can put more lights, like we said, you can put extra lights into that. So you put this on the stand, put a light head on it, you can clamp it to a bar, you can put this on top of stand a hold your foam core that's just has a myriad of uses in the studio, and it screws down tight so you don't have to worry about falling off, and they're made by a very small manufacturers usually called super clamps or math for clamps. Yeah, I like that because there are instances where it's easier for you if you're stacking light and I will give you a demo that but if you have one light above and a second light below just too attached to the same stance, you don't have all these stands around, you know you can do it that way, or as he said here, attaching it, there's another head, I don't know how you would do it to have another head right here unless you have a stand awkwardly like tilted it wouldn't work so that's a pretty good tool that other one is auto polls and how auto polls work is they used tension you could put them up to the ceiling and on the ground and he's attention to hold them in place and you can use that to hang a lot of things but I use it in my studio for background stands there are also regular background stands that's totally fine you can use that you can get basis for the auto polls so they can stand on their own as well but this is something you'll see and a lot of studios rental studios there is there a little bit heavier duty and they're a little bit more stable and I use them all the time all right lastly just to touch on stand a couple rules of thumb can I have it there it's not use stand ok a couple rules of some for stand some things you want to look for in a stand is you wanted to have ideally some of this air shock which means we'll see if this one has it that one doesn't something to watch out it's something to watch out for this one does not have it so imagine you're raising your light up and it's really heavy and your hand slips and like crushes your hand okay because this doesn't have like hydraulic airships called air shock it is something to help you out it's like a safety thing. It's a little bit more difficult to raise the light out there's a little bit more resistance but it's also safer so that would be a consideration the wider the base of the stand, the more stable it isthe. So this would be an example. This is ah, metal heavy duty stand it's got a pretty wide basis would be like a c stand and the's are what you would see in most professional studios. The reason that many beginners and often I don't even use them is they're really heavy. This is something that is pretty good. C stand a century stances manufacturer and you can line him up together so you each leg is a different height so you can stack them right close to each other if you need the lights really close to each other where you can't do that with the wider basis. Yeah, these these are more stable, like dave. I mean, you can see that right here I'm giving the same kind of push on each one of them and this one slides where is this one? The way it's still it's much more stable the's are more expensive and it's easier to put a weight on this much, much easier to put a put a sandbag on it, then it is on one of these, and the sandbag is more effective on the c stand than it is on one of these, and the other thing I really wanted to mention is when you're setting up your stand, you don't you don't want it to be like this, but if you left, but the thing is people doing to save space, right? If you're in a small space you don't want to have, the problem is the narrower that that base is, the more unstable it is, and you don't also want to be at the other far extreme either. Typically you're aiming for something around ninety degrees, you can see how john hasn't set up here, you just don't want them to be elevated too much, because then it loses its stability. All right? We want to be sturdy, a lot of ground. We talked about boom arm yesterday, so I won't touch on it, but that's something that I would recommend personally gives you a little bit more flexibility so that your life doesn't always have to be on the top of the stand. You can actually move it out over the scene. I recommend if you are going to buy one by a good one because the money you put into those lights is held in the hands of that step boom arm