{"id":655,"date":"2010-04-15T22:03:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T22:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/randompanderings.com\/?p=655"},"modified":"2016-07-07T21:24:45","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T21:24:45","slug":"maxispoto-flash-test-shoot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/maxispoto-flash-test-shoot\/","title":{"rendered":"Maxispot\/O-Flash test shoot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the beautiful weather today, Nicola called over to let me do some fun test shots with the Elinchrom Maxispot. It&#8217;s a large, efficient reflector that allows me to overcome the Sun, to give a day for night look using my Elinchrom Ranger Quadras.<\/p>\n<p>After a quick test on the green, I noticed something rather unusual down by the train tracks: a burnt out car. We used this as a background before moving down to the tracks. My aim here wasn&#8217;t producing portfolio images, but rather getting used to new equipment. It would be a sad and sorry state of affairs to be working and not be familiar with ones tools. As I&#8217;ve recently invested in new modifiers (some of which I&#8217;ve already posted about), testing is an absolute necessity.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seanmcfoto.com\/randompanderings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/musicNic-6054.jpg\" alt=\"Nic-6054.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"675\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>Here the Maxispot is lighting both Nic and the car. Given that the Quadra is only 400 w\/s and it&#8217;s not at full power here, it&#8217;s doing a fantastic job with coverage from about 8-10 feet away. The Sun is coming from camera left, behind Nic. You can see this acting as the hair light in this shot.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seanmcfoto.com\/randompanderings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/musicNic-6084.jpg\" alt=\"Nic-6084.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"675\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>We moved onto the railway gates from there. Again the Sun is from the rear, this time the right. While reflectors are a hard light source, I think this has a softer transition, with reasonable fill in.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seanmcfoto.com\/randompanderings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/musicNic-6108.jpg\" alt=\"Nic-6108.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The final setup with this light was at the bikeshed. Being in shade I was able to drop both the aperture on the camera, and the power from the pack, almost to lowest power in fact.<\/p>\n<p>I did do one other test that day, but it wasn&#8217;t Quadra based, it was with the &#8216;O-Flash&#8217;, a modifier in the Ray-Flash vein. It doesn&#8217;t have a full circle, to allow ETTL to work. I test this, but to be honest, I prefer working it in Manual mode and working with a fixed distance. I have to say that, while ringflash is not a flattering light, I really missed the top shadow from this more than anything else.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/seanmcfoto.com\/randompanderings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/musicNic-6162.jpg\" alt=\"Nic-6162.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/div>\n<p>I don&#8217;t shoot this as an award winner, it&#8217;s really just taken to examine the shadow pattern. The left and right shadows are immediately visible, but there&#8217;s none on top, which is a little disappointing. But as this device is only \u20ac30, it&#8217;s hard to complain. It&#8217;s reasonable sturdy bar the clear plastic front, which is a little flimsy. I&#8217;d like to try this with 2 rear grids and see how it does.<\/p>\n<p>Considering we shot for only a little over an hour and got 4 locations (even though I&#8217;ve only shown 3 here), it was still a productive shoot from a test point of view. I&#8217;ve a much better understanding of these tools, and have utter confidence using them again in the future in a commercial situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,75,88,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-models","category-photo-2","category-quadra","category-shoot-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4342,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions\/4342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seanmcfoto.com\/smcc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}