Which is better, Speedlights or Strobes?

Many moons ago when I first left art college my first real assignment came along: it was a big hair shoot for one of the Toni & Guy hair salons here in the UK. The brief was to shoot 6 models – all head and shoulder shots and of course, all showing the hair in the best possible light.

At this stage I didn't have any lighting equipment; in fact I think I even used my friend’s Nikon film camera for the shoot – I certainly needed to think about getting my own lighting system.

So I had the camera for the shoot sorted, but no lighting equipment. Art college was great, you went along signed your name and they loaned out all the kit you could possibly need; but those days and privileges were now gone so I needed to start investing in my own equipment. Since I knew that photography was going to be what I wanted to do long-term, I wanted to invest my very limited finances wisely.

My very first commercial shoot way back in 2013, I was straight out of art college and I had a hair shoot for Toni and Guy. This image was shot with my brand new Bowens Esprit 500w strobes that I still use to this day.

This shoot took place in the salon in the evening after their working day. Although this particular shoot required flash lighting, I knew that most of my work in the future will need supplemental lighting too since I've always been an artificial light shooter. All I needed was to figure out which lighting system was best for me: should I just grab a couple of extra speedlights, or should I plump down a lot of money upfront and get some studio strobes which would have everything I needed for my shoots for the foreseeable future?

The two main choices I had were speedlights or strobes, each certainly have their key features and trade-offs.

I don't have the exact figures for back then, but let's look at modern day equivalents in terms of specs and pricing since the same lighting options are still available and nothing new in terms of lighting systems has really been introduced over the past few decades. Apart from LED lighting – this is not strictly relevant as a comparison here as this is a constant light and geared more towards video than stills.

For some reason the most common route many photographers seem to take when they start building their kit is to buy some speedlights. I had a cheap one initially and I know most people always have a speedlight before that have a strobe, but in hindsight I’m not really sure why.

Speedlights are small and light: you can attach them to the top of your camera, and now most modern cameras will also control that flash with incredible accuracy. So I suppose from that perspective, speedlights are the less technically intimidating choice. I also think that it's easier to build your lighting kit piece by piece with speedlights without any seriously large investment up-front - you buy your speedlight then you buy all the little add-ons, slaves, modifiers and so on. You can take your time and build your kit as you go along giving you the impression of saving money, but investing in a strobe kit does require you to make more of an initial investment. However, if you want to make it more financially viable, picking up a kit of lights will save you a considerable amount rather than buying all the pieces individually.

Ten years on nearly to the day, I still have my same strobes. I've certainly added a lot more modifiers to my kit but essentially I've been carting around the same original four Bowens Esprits from the beginning, making these lights a pretty solid investment for me.

So before we start out down the road of investing in a lighting solution there are certainly many choices to consider in both the speedlight and strobe camps. We are going to look at the optimal setup; and considering we are starting out we will be looking for value as well as long term investment in quality. There are many cheap knock-off speedlights and strobes available but they are generally not very well made and don't offer long term reliability when shooting for and in front of paying clients, so I won't be considering those here. Remember: we are “investing”.

First and foremost you want know exactly what you want to be shooting; knowing what your “bread-and-butter” work is going to be will dictate your kit. It's easy for wedding and press photographers – they know they need speedlights, no “if’s” no “buts”, they need them to do their job. If something special comes along, then sure they can hire a strobe kit occasionally, but they need the speedlights to be light on their feet whilst shooting.

Still-life shooters like car photographers and other fields that require them to be in a studio 99% of the time will need strobes. They are dealing with detailed work where the quality of the work is paramount for big clients. They need the best quality of light they can get so strobes and their plethora of attachments is the only way for them to go.

For the rest of us though, the decision might not be so obvious. I think for this it just comes down to personal choice of what you actually want to shoot. Fashion photographers can choose to only shoot on location so they might rely heavily on natural light, but other fashion photographers may also only exclusively shoot in a studio so may prefer to use strobes for their specific style. Once you've figured out how you want to shoot you can better make the judgement on your system – there is clearly little point in investing in a flash lighting system if you predominantly work with natural light.

So let’s assume that we want to be mindful of value as we are starting out, but will be predominantly shooting with flash lighting, and shooting for clients with most of our work being done inside in a controlled environment, whether that be a studio, a client salon or even a home-studio. We also want to consider the size of our initial studio lighting kit; realistically a lot can be done with two lights and I will discuss the pricing for that, but to get anything really special and worth charging for you really want to look at three to four lights to be able to offer a client some semblance of choice and variation within the shoot.

So what are some of our choices and what are the pros and cons for each?

My first and only speedlight.  I picked this one up when I had to shoot the occasional wedding when I started out. The Nikon SB600 is very light and fairly easy to use even if the menu system is a little convoluted.

The speedlight-er’s two light studio kit

Please bear in mind that all the prices listed below are guides and I have tried to give an average cost using prices from stores like Amazon. Photographic stores like Calumet can sometimes charge double these prices for a higher quality similar product but conversely places like eBay will charge half for a lesser quality similar product. The resulting final prices reflect this and although you could probably save money on inferior items you could certainly spend more on others.

The actual flash itself; the Nikon SB600 or SB700. These are not top end but they are still very good speedlights and these retail for around £200-£250 each.  Heres the SB700 on Amazon, for higher end options you could also look at the top of the range Nikon speedlight which is currently the SB910 and retails for £339

The light-stand for a pair of speedlights £25-£30. Very flimsy at this price so be aware of the weight of attachment you will be applying to stands like this. 2x 220cm lighting stand.

Attaching the speedlight to the top of a light-stand via a bracket – around £20 each. These will also have the ability to hold an umbrella. Generic ball head hot shoe mount and umbrella bracket.

An umbrella lighting modifier. These vary drastically depending on size and quality but you can pick them up for around £20 each. Lastolight 80cm umbrella.

A soft-box lighting modifier; again these vary drastically but for a reasonable size and quality soft-box that includes the attachment to a speedlight you can pick them up for around £50. Heres a little 22cm x 22cm speedlight softbox by Lastolite.

The speedlight power source; 4 rechargeable batteries £7.50 (realistically you will need at least one spare set for each speedlight so 1 speedlight would require 8 batteries) plus a battery charger at £9. Amazon link.

We will also need to sync our speedlights to our camera; this is one of trickiest pieces to get right as the prices vary so dramatically that you're never quite sure why and if you should go cheap or not. They realistically range from £30-£300 for a transceiver and receiver but you only need to buy one cheap set to realise that you should have spent a little more. You can probably get a decent one for £50-£100 though, (here’s a great review on varying quality triggers and prices by Digital Camera World). Remember that this will only fire one speedlight so to fire two you will need another receiver and that will cost £299 for a transceiver and two receivers.

So to sum up the speedlight kit for two heads:

2x speedlight SB700 at £225 each is £450

2x light stands £25

2x speedlight to lightstand bracket at £20 each is £40 for a pair

1 umbrella lighting modifier £20

1 soft-box lighting modifier £50

Speedlight power source consisting of 4xAA plus 4 spares plus a charger is £24

Speedlight wireless sync including one transceiver and two receivers is £299

Total: £908 for a two light speedlight studio setup

Total for a four light studio speedlight setup is £1816

My preferred lighting weapons of choice, my original Bowens Esprit 500w heads.

The strobist’s two light studio kit

I chose a good starter option of two strobes with a power output of 400w. This power is going to cover nearly all of your strobist needs for a while and even though not hugely powerful for a strobe it still offers more power than nearly every speedlight on the market. This subject of comparing powers between speedlights and strobes is a slightly controversial one as you can't strictly compare the two power outputs accurately due to several variables such as modifiers on strobes, and speedlights always being focused in their housing. Though, as a very rough guide I know that an SB900 speedlight at full power gave the same exposure as a 300w strobe at 1/4 power.

Currently you can pick up a kit of two 400w Bowens heads for £557 at Calumet. This is actually the newer RX model with the built-in Pulsar radio receivers enabling you to fire the lights remotely from your camera but you can still pick up the older kits without them and they are going for £466 at Calumet.. If you feel that you won't need all that power then you can save a little and go for the 200w heads for around £399.

What do you get with that kit? Well pretty much everything we looked at for the speedlight-ers kit; 2x 400w heads, 2x heavy duty light stands, 2x 90cm Umbrellas, 1x sync lead, 1xPulsar Tx radio trigger (these fire the strobes wirelessly) and a carrying bag for it all.

You could also pick yourself up a soft-box lighting modifier too for around £50-£100 and here's a great portrait size 80cm x 100cm Bownes softbox from Wex for £75.

Total: £632 for a two light strobist studio setup including the extra soft-box.

Total for a four light strobist studio setup plus the two extra soft-boxes is £1264

This shot was taken using four Bowens Esprit 500w heads, 2x floor stand, 1x small softbox, 1x strip softbox, 1x 60 degree reflector, 2x umbrellas and a variety of gels. Most of this equipment comes straight out of the initial 2 kits I originally purchased over a decade ago.

So to recap, if you are looking to be shooting in a home studio or at clients’ premises or anywhere that you can drive to, and has power, the strobist setup is definitely the only choice in my opinion. The speedlights will take up a lot less space; they will be a lot lighter and will always be the go-to choice for wedding, press and any other shooter that has to be light on their feet. But for home studio users like portraiture, model portfolios etc, the strobes are certainly going to offer the best versatility and value in the long-term.

Like I mentioned at the start, I think people start down the speedlight-ers path because it’s easier to build your kit piece by piece. I think we all start out with a speedlight, play with that on the camera for a few months then maybe buy a couple of modifiers then eventually think about getting it off the camera and pick up some wireless triggers. That's the natural progression but if you know you want to stay the course with your photography and you have the money for the initial investment upfront, going for the strobist kit it will save you money long-term for sure.

There are of course many other things to consider between the speedlights and strobes – light quality, which I believe is the most important factor. Light quality is something rather subjective and like everything else, needs to be traded off against other variables. This is a huge subject and beyond the scope of this article, but I will certainly be testing and exploring it in the near future.

A final word on that investment statement is that the four Bowens Esprit 500w heads that I bought and used on that first shoot straight out of college over a decade ago. I actually still use those same four heads today. That’s a pretty good return on my investment considering I've had four digital cameras since then and they cost a lot more than all my lighting equipment combined many times over.

But please, by all means if you have an example of a great starter kit for speedlight or strobe shooters then please feel free to share them in the comments down below.

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Further reading...

So you've got your two lights, here's a great and simple way to use them with this lighting set-up and diagram 'Using Two Lights to Create Incredibly Flattering Portraits'

Still not convinced you want to take the plunge on investing in a strobe kit, why not look at a cheap alternative to a studio lighting set-up by reading this article on 'Taking Studio Lighting Shots for Under £25'

Think you'd like to expand your kit even further? Here's a lighting set-up with lighting diagrams on 'Your Basic 6 Light Set-Up'

How Copying other Photographers can Help Develop a Personal Style

We've all done it, we've all denied it, we aren't proud of it, but I guarantee that at some point on our creative journeys each and every one of us has copied somebody else's work.

It's one of those things we tend to feel bad about, it’s like invisible theft, nothing has changed hands but you now have something that somebody else had. Because of this feeling of stealing, we all vehemently deny it and desperately scramble to try and find differences in the work.

I personally feel that the act of copying others is at an all time high in the photographic industry right now, and there's a few reasons for this. Firstly we are all becoming visually saturated by literally thousands of images every day now with Facebook, Instagram, Pininterst etc etc. The list is huge and ever growing so it's only natural that we’re going to produce an image like we've already seen somewhere along the line. Secondly though, and I think most interestingly, we copy one another far more now than ever because of the pace that the medium of photography is evolving at.

'Photographers' can take images within the first week of owning their first camera and that certainly wasn't possible by masters of the craft 25 years ago. Technology is also filling in the knowledge gaps and giving a helping hand where needed. Plus the affordability and accessibility of the equipment is within reach of even the most basic consumer too.tha

So why all the copying?

I think it comes down to a mindset and a false sense of security within the medium itself. I’ve bought all the gear and I want to use it. I don't want to have to learn how to use it at University for three to five years. I want results today. And why not?

Photography is not alone with this modern need for instant results, in fact nearly anything that employs technology to garnish results has fallen foul to this idea. We've spent good money so we expect outstanding results. Technology enables us to run before we can walk, so we inevitably run regardless of the consequences. So what does this actually mean for us photographers? Well it means we get stuck-in and start using the equipment without be taught how to use it, the only way, and I mean the only way this technique can produce results is to copy others.

There, I said it. It's out there.

The image on the left was taken in 1929 by George Hoyningen-Huene for Vogue. The image on the right by Mikael Jansson for Interview Magazine May 2012. Hoyningen-Huene's entire style of the time was models in bathing suits posed in classical sculpture poses. Mikael Jansson's 2012 editorial was clearly influenced by this as it is a complete removal from his straight to camera posing and separate model shots. Although this is a direct copy its clear to see Jansson's personal influence as he shifts the plane to add depth and reinterprets the lighting to enhance form. This is an evolved copy.

Is a Formal Photographic Education Still Important?

A while ago I was interviewed by a University and one of the questions I was asked was;

'Do you still feel a formal education in photography is an important factor to success?'

The following was my response;

'I think formal education in photography is extremely important and I would recommend it to anybody. Formal education provides you with the unbiased tools to help any photographer realise their own individual creativity. I see a lot of photographers announcing they are 'self taught' like it's a badge of honour. Not only do I find this ironic, 'yeah I'm self taught by hundreds of other photographers on YouTube', but it's also stating that 'look at my work, its good and I taught myself'.

I know personally that my photography would be nowhere near as good today had it not been for my formal photographic education. I guarantee that a lot of great photographers out their today who actually have their own individual style are the ones who were formally educated. The people copying them were not.'

I think it’s pretty clear to see where I stand on the topic, and granted there are some bold sweeping statements in there but please, just let me briefly elaborate and hopefully explain what I mean.

I was fortunate enough to be taught what the tools can do, not how to use them. There is a very small but very important distinction here. Once I am aware what can be achieved I am left to figure out how to achieve it. This by its very nature builds individual style, something that is very difficult to maintain with technology.

Technology is diminishing our individuality and personal style

For example; if I was to put five photographers in a room with five cameras, five tripods and five light meters and asked them all to photograph the apple on the table in front of them, how different do actually think those images would really be?

The technology is going to get in the way of the creative process and the results will reflect that. Now imagine putting five artists in the same room and asking them to produce an image of the same apple but all they had was a brush, a box of paints and piece of paper, imagine how varied those paintings would be in contrast.

Technology is getting in the way of our creativity by distorting what it means to be a photographer. It is diminishing our individuality and thus our personal style.

The image on the left was shot by Patrick Demarchelier for Harpers Bazaar for the December edition in 1992. The copy on the right was for the December issue in 2013 and recreated by James White. I think its pretty clear that White was requested to copy Demarchelir, whether it was by the magazine or an art director, either way this is an example of a direct copy but White still applied his own style, most noticeably with the lighting . He decided to soften the whole look, whether for his own benefit or for Kidman's. The light in White's' image is far more flattering and by adding additional lights from behind he's enabled more dimension with the very diffused key light. I would definitely argue that this is an evolved copy.

Copy with Pride

If you've read this far then congratulations, you're nearly there but let's just quickly recap the ranting and refocus the point of this article. Photographic technology is empowering us to be 'better' photographers. With modern equipment we don't need to go to school to learn how to use the kit and get all smelly in elbow deep toxic chemicals, we can take a 'great' photograph very easily on our own, the camera does that part.

So now we can take 'great' shots, what's next? Well now we need to look at other photographers work to get ideas on what's possible because remember, we haven't been taught what's possible, we've only been taught how to get there and the camera is doing that bit for us. So finally the copying begins.

Copying has been around forever, its only now that with thousands of people seeing our images that it's become so difficult to get away with it and hide. So don't hide it, be open about it. Embrace the copying because you will not get away with it, we are all simply too connected these days to hide it, somebody will always catch you out. That's exactly what legendary photographers Mert and Marcus did, they were honest about it right from the get-go and they were proud of where they were coming from. 

The two images on the left are from legendary fashion photographer Guy Bourdin. Bourdin made a big name for himself in the 70's by using filters to exaggerate and saturate the colours in his photographs. Mert and Marcus who shot images like the Gucci advert on the right openly copied this style but took it forward by using modern digital manipulation techniques to achieve the same 'hyper-real' saturated colours. A style that would stay with them right up until the present day.

Mert & Marcus

Mert and Marcus are an incredibly famous fashion photography duo that specialise in photographing nearly every female icon of the past two decades and imortalising them on every front cover imaginable. Their work is bright, bold and they always portray their female stars as powerful, sexy and glamorous icons of their time. You will have seen their work even if you don't know it, but how have they carved out this style? Well, they copied it. Mert & Marcus are self professed copycats at that, they aren't shy about it and why should they be, their work speaks for itself. It’s harder to see now, but twenty years ago their inspiration came from the legend Guy Bourdin. Bourdin was their 1970's equivalent and a quick peruse over his work will show you that he photographed the exact same qualities from his female subjects and portrayed them in bold, brash super saturated colours, making them leap from the page. But Mert and Marcus didn't stop there, in fact they have actually made a career out of openly copying others and adding their own personal evolved style to it and usually to great effect.

I'm sure we all remember the Madonna Album cover from a few years ago (right hand image). This was shot by Mert and Marcus but they copied the fluted glass effect from Erwin Blumenfeld's 1943 portraits (left hand image). Personally I have a lot of respect for the nerve it must of taken to even suggest the technique for an album cover for a mega star like Madonna. Conversely, respect is also due to Madonna for choosing to go with it. For somebody whose self image is as iconic as hers, it was certainly a bold decision to then distort it. Also note the distinctive saturation that is present in the Mert and Marcus image, a style choice that is always present in their work.

So if Mert and Marcus are self confessed copycats how can this be morally acceptable and what makes them different? The catalyst comes from the fact that Mert and Marcus aren't classically trained. I think they had backgrounds in music and graphic design respectively so the only way they could photograph at first was to copy. So how do you copy somebody but remain unique? Well Mert and Marcus took Bourdins style and simply evolved it. The biggest change they made though was to add the huge string of technology to their bow. Their work pushed the digital medium right from the beginning and they made sure their images stood above the rest by simply being ahead of the curve with their digital manipulation and it became their style. They took the Bourdin style of saturated colours that he achieved with filters years ago and added the new era of digital to create their 'hyper-real' look. In an interview with them in The New Yorker in 2004 Grace Coddington (director of Vouge at the time) spoke about Mert & Marcus’ style and referenced a shoot they had done the previous year in Dubai.

They do not hide the fact that they do so. “It’s very fakey, fakey, fakey, but that’s what it’s supposed to be,” Coddington said. Even real things seem fake: a year ago, they traveled, at great expense, to the desert of Dubai to shoot a campaign for Louis Vuitton. In the end, the dunes looked computer-generated anyway.'

The Jean Paul Gaultier Jeans advert on the left was shot in 2009 but Mert and Marcus took that shot and copied it in their own style in 2013. They applied their loose composition technique, an off-kilter look that emphasises an instant and more personal feel to the crop but most importantly they have applied their highly saturated look that has stayed with them right from the early days of the Guy Bourdins influence. They have copied it, but evolved it.

Admit it and move on

So it’s fine to copy, like I mentioned at the start, we all started out doing this but if we accept we are copying we have to evolve past it. The key is to not hide it, especially at the start, don't deny you're copying somebody if you are. It's part of the creative process and for those who are 'self taught' you have to copy whether you like it or not because nobody is showing you how to create, you are only left to copy what you've already seen. By accepting this I think it enables us to move past this copying stage far faster and your personal style can emerge on the other side far quicker and far more defined. It's just human nature for us to reject and feel bad about copying, if we acknowledge we are copying we are forced to move on very quickly because although we've acknowledged we're copying we aren't proud of it.

We all inherently want our own voice.

Finally we have Mert and Marcus' most famous copy. On the left we have two images by Jeff Bark from 2009 and on the right we have the 'copy kings' Mert and Marcus doing what they do best. This particular photoshoot of theirs caused huge controversy at the time and although they're very open about their copying, they do usually make more of an effort to add their own mark than this. In fact I am personally inclined to believe that this may well of been more of a marketing ploy by them at the time and a risky one at that (I'd also like to point out that this was huge exposure for Jeff Bark too and if you google the guys name, its always these shots that appear). I don't think there is actually many high profile shooters who could get away with this level of immaculate copying without receiving huge back-lash from the industry. I think it's because Mert & Marcus have always been so open about their copying in the past that everybody just accepted it as just that, a copy and everybody appreciated it for what it was. Brave, but bold and Mert and Marcus made considerable ground on making copying more acceptable purely because if top tier shooters like them can do it, then we all can.

Help me Evolve too

So I'd like to caveat my earlier sweeping statement in my interview, 'I guarantee that a lot of great photographers out their today who actually have their own individual style are the ones who were formally educated.'

I would like to add that although a formal education can actually quicken the process of an individual style, I do believe that copying others and accepting it as such can also be the seed of an individual style.

Here we have an example of a photographer being inspired by my work. This photographer got in touch with me a few months ago thanking me for my tips and tutorials and sent me a few shots to have a look at. The images on the left are my images and the images on the right are their copies. Remember copying is not a bad thing whilst you're developing a style, so resist the temptation to replace the word copy for inspiration at this stage.

A few months later and this is that photographers images now, in fact some of these were actually shot just weeks after he initially sent me his first shots. You don't need a PhD in art theory to see that these are definitely no longer copies. The photographer has evolved the look and developed a clear individual style very quickly. I personally think these images are stunning and I'm certainly impressed by his interpretation of my work, on top of that I will certainly be looking at exploring a darker look to some of my own shots in the future and see where that takes my own personal style.

I personally get sent photos all the time from photographers who are practising my techniques. Sure they're copying me, they're acknowledging it and they're telling me. It's a great process, we discuss the shots they've taken, they reshoot it and without exception the next shoot has evolved and an individual style is starting to already emerge. But it doesn't stop there. I share my techniques, people send me their shots using my techniques and I see new ways of developing my own style too, it's win-win so I love it when people send me their copies.

So go ahead, please send me your copies and allow my style to evolve too :D

Do you agree?

Thank you as always for reading this article. I appreciate your time is important so I am certainly grateful that you decided to spend it here. But what do you guys think about copying? Do you think it’s a valid form of learning? Have you ever copied someone else’s work? Did you mention your inspiration in your final pieces, or did you simply deny it? Let me know in the comments below.

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Resources

Photographer: George Hoyningen-Huene

Photographer: Mikael Jansson

Photographer: Patrick Demarchelier

Photographer: James White

Photographer: Guy Bourdin

Photographer: Mert & Marcus

Photographer: Erwin Blumenfeld

Photographer: Jeff Bark

Photographer: Edit April 2017- The photographer who originally took inspiration from my work at the end of this article has asked for his name to be removed from this article.

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More Free Tips & Techniques

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Testing your lighting attachments for light fall-off

I had an hour or so spare in the studio the other day whilst waiting for a client so I thought I'd have a quick look at the light fall-off of some of my attachments. Why would I bother doing this you ask? Well its not quite as ridiculously geeky as it first sounds. We all need to know our equipment and for those of us that have been shooting a specific camera for years will tell you, it becomes an extension of yourself and you could happily operate it in the dark because we know it so well. The same theory should really apply to all the equipment you own and you're probably going to have your lighting kit a lot longer than your camera so it's a great idea to find out exactly how its responding. As a result you will have a better understanding of light and how you can control it and with this knowledge it will mean you can easily pre-visualise how a set-up will look and more importantly you will have a better idea of whats going wrong if the resulting image isn't looking right.

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Lighting set up lighting fall-off test

The experiment was set up like this, the strobe was locked off and wasn't moved throughout, it was angled at 45 degrees to the wall or 135 degrees, however you want to look at it. The flash was set to a constant power throughout the test and the camera settings were also fixed at ISO 100, 1/160 second at f16.

Clicking on the images below will enlarge them.

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The results

The findings were measured like this, everything  was set and unchanged throughout, the only adjustments were the actual swopping of attachments. A light meter reading was taken at point X on the wall and at both point I's on the wall also. The resulting fall-off of light was recorded with a light meter at each of these points and recorded.

Data reads as follows - Attachment Name - Reading at Point X - Reading at first Point I - Reading at second point I - Total number of stops of light fall-off

• Large 21" Beauty Dish with diffusion cover  - f8 - f6.2 - f5.2 -   Total of 1.25 stops of fall-off
• Small 15" Beauty Dish no diffusion cover   - f15 - f10 - f7.3 -   Total of 1 stop of fall-off
• 65 degree deep reflector dish   - f12 - f9.5 - f8 -   Total of 1 stop of fall-off
• Small Soft-box   - f8 - f6.7 - f5.6 -   Total of 1 stop of fall-off
• 120 degree wide angle reflector   - f8.7 - f7.3 - f6.2 -   Total of 1 stop of fall-off
• 15 degree Snoot   - f5.6 - f4.8 - f3.4 -   Total of 1.25 stops of fall-off
• 60 degree reflector dish   - f9.5 - f8 - f6.7 -   Total of 1 stop of fall-off
• 60 degree reflector dish with 1/8" grid   - f8 - f4.8 - f2.8 -   Total of 3 stops of fall-off
• 60 degree reflector dish with 1/4" grid   - f8 - f5.6 - f4 -   Total of 2 stops of fall-off
• Large Soft-box   - f8.7 - f6.7 - f5.6 -   Total of 1.25 stops of fall-off

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Clicking this spreadsheet will enlarge it

So apart from that being an excuse to finally use a spreadsheet what purpose did it actually achieve? Well it was pretty much as I expected but it was interesting to see the brightest and darkest attachments for the same power output. The 65 degree deep dish outputting the most power over the 15 degree snoot loosing the most. It's also easy to see on the chart above how they all drop off over distance with the most aggressive clearly being the grids. There were a couple of things I did learn though, the grids were far more controlled than I had originally anticipated. I actually thought the snoot might of had more control of the light than it did and in the chart above you can see its fall-off of light is a lot more gradual than I first thought. The other thing that struck me was how much fall-off of light the big soft box produced. It actually had 1.25 stops of fall-off compared to the small soft-boxes 1 stop. In reality you'd think that a large open spread of light like that would have a consistent reading throughout the 24" range and as a result I took multiple readings because I was sure it was wrong. The only thing I can reasonably surmise from this is that at close range like this (36") the large soft-box does not have time to spread and on further inspection I realised that it did not have an internal baffle to further scatter the light. So as weird as this sounds, at close range in its current baffle-less state you would actually get a more uniform and softer light from the small soft-box.

If you have a quick half hour I do recommend trying this experiment with your own attachments, yes its pretty nerdy but it will definitely help you better understand your kit and it may even show you something you weren't expecting as it did for me (and yes I'm pretty sure a spreadsheet of your findings is mandatory).

Photo Competitions - Should I be entering them?

Photographic competitions have been around nearly as long as the art itself but it seems that in the wake of the internet they are seen as less important as they once were. There are a million and one ways for our work to be seen by thousands of people very quickly now so does it really matter if we win a few comps? Who cares?

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So this was my first ever competition submission. Back in 1999 when I was a student I entered Ilford films Black and white competition with these shots. This shoot was specifically targeted at this competition and was originally shot on a Mamiya 6x45 I think using Ilford 400 XP2 120 film. The various items were glue gunned into cans and then they in turn were glue gunned to a perpendicular board. A variety of water, oils, ball bearings and sand etc where then poured straight down and the final images obviously straighten afterwards. These images earned me a highly coveted 'Commended' award and £100 Calumet voucher that I think I still have in a box somewhere. I doubt it will get me much now.

Should I be entering photographic competitions?

I think entering photo comps is a purely personal decision and I know loads of successful photographers who have never entered a photo competition in their lives and never will. Conversely I know some photographers who swear by the drive, inspiration and prestige that photo contests provide saying that they would never have been as successful if it wasn't for the comps, some of them have never even won either.

So lets look at some of pros and cons and see if they are right you:

Pros

• Lets cut to the chase here, winning comps means winning prizes and some of them are BIG prizes. A lot of them might be photo gear and photo trips but some are straight up cold hard cash. The Sony World Photography Awards was a tidy $25,000 prize amongst other little bonuses.
• Some competitions offer exposure over tangible prizes and some of these can be some serious reach too. The infamous Red Bull Illume was pushed out continually for months prior and months after and I defy anybody to of not seen at least one of the images from the 2013 entrants floating about the web. When they finally announced the winners it was a far cry from sharing it on their Facebook Page. The official quote from their site reads:

'The Top 50 Red Bull Illume finalists were unveiled at the Avenue of Stars in Hong Kong. The 50 finalist images will travel around the world as a unique and stand-alone photo exhibition on 2 x 2m lightboxes. To showcase the illumination, the exhibitions are only open at night-time.'.

Thats some impressive coverage.

• Granted the creative ego is a sensitive beast but if it wasn't we wouldn't be creative. If your ego is inflated correctly it can be a huge confidence boost in the right direction and winning a photo contest, big or small is a big tick in the win column for sure. Yes it's fantastic that your mum loves your 'snaps' but how do they really stand up against your peers? Entering a photo competition will pit you against other artists from around the globe and it can be a great way of seeing how well your work really stands up. Winning a photo comp at the very least will reassure you that you are on the right track, losing or not getting many votes can be painful to take at first but ultimately it will be a great driver for you. Sure you can surround yourself with lovers of your work but sometimes the cold hard reality is what we really need over the saccharin pandering of your friends and family.
• Many photographers find that photo competitions actually provide inspiration and creative direction. To some artists, a blank canvas is the biggest hurdle to overcome and with most photo comps having themes and specific subjects is sometimes just what some of us need to get focused. You can find many smaller online comps where the theme changes weekly and this can be a great way to force yourself to try new ideas and techniques.

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This image was originally shot for a hair competition but several years later earned the Grand Prize winners title of the Phlearn community competition for Hard Lighting.

Cons

• Granted many of the Pros I've just mentioned have an equal Con but lets look at some of the specifics. Firstly, many competitions now require an entry fee, the prestigious PDN Photo Annual for example charges you $55 per image submitted and although they have some nice prizes you certainly wouldn't be firing off your Flickr library to them.

• Elitist back slapping can seep into every profession and I can assure you photography is no different. Some photo contests talk big but offer you absolutely nothing in return apart from a little gold star that you can put on your bio (not a joke by the way), they will even charge you to enter just for the privilege. The International Colour Awards competition took a beating online last year as they charged you $35 to enter with the Grand Prize being the “Masters Cup Award” title. Haven't heard of it? Nobody else had either. Be very wary of comps that charge you and only offer 'Titles' as awards, they rarely mean much if anything at all.

• Not winning sucks. The reason why wining feels good is because you know you've earned it. Feel free to message me and I will send you a message back saying you're a 'Top Photographer', it probably won't mean much to you because you haven't earned it. Winning is great, losing isn't, so although winning can be a boon to your ego loosing over and over again can be crushing and very demotivating so be realistic of which comps you enter. So if you've just received your first camera and you're still unsure about the difference between ISO and AFS don't beat yourself up about not winning the Sony World Photography Awards. However if you're shooting commercially for National Geographic for example there's probably little point in you entering the local church nature comp. If you get a big kick out of winning and beating the local parish scout group then you and your ego need to see somebody more professional than myself I'm afraid.

• Taking guidelines and direction from competition entry forms can actually be detrimental to your style. Some say you should never shoot for comps and find the right contest for your style and only enter what you've already taken. Others say that if you aren't shooting specially for that competition than you're wasting your time. I think somewhere in the middle is fine, sure enter a few shots you've already taken, there's no harm in that but if a great comp comes along and it gets you really inspired then shoot for it too.

• One of the biggest Cons is obviously copyright issues. Entering a photo contest can permanently hand over the copyright of your image indefinitely win or loose. If its an old image that is just languishing in obscurity on Flickr then it might be worth a pop. If its a commercial shot that a client two years down the line wants to pay you 35K per annum for usage rights but you no longer own the  copyright for, then that might sting a little.

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Another Phlearn community winner, this time for a straight Black and White category. The photo was originally shot the year before for a model shoot.

So to wrap up a few key points about competitions then, firstly I think entering photo contests its great to get inspired and to get a bit of a gauge on where you sit with your peers. Look at previous winners and ask yourself is this competition for me. Don't take it too seriously though as loosing can be infuriating if you think your shot was better than the winners.

Any contest you enter will require a very thorough read of the terms of usage. Some of them basically own your image forever, period. Sure you get your prize money but they get to use your image wherever and whenever they want. In my opinion unless you really respect the company or cause avoid these like a corrupt compact flash card.

Another big thing to bear in mind is the exposure I mentioned earlier, a big competition win with mass exposure can set you up with far more than any prize. You will probably recall a few years ago wildlife photographer Jose Luis Rodriguez was striped of his Wildlife Photographer of the Year award after a month long investigation to see if his leaping wolf image was a 'Fake'. Now I'm sure Mr Rodriguez was devastated to loose the award and the £10000 prize but that story and his image was published in every blog, magazine and newspaper in the land. I don't know for sure but I would like to wager that Mr Rodriguez has made far, far more than £10000 from that exposure and surely had more job offers than he could handle. Any publicity is good publicity and exposure guarantees that.

Here's a few comps to get you started, good luck :)

Master Photographers Association Awards

The Telegraph Big Picture Photography Competition

Shoot the Face

International Landscape Photographer of the Year

Urban Photographer of the Year

Monochrome Photography Awards

Phlearn - Weekly photo contest

Explaining Tilt-Shift Lenses and the Lensbaby Composer Pro

In the past Tilt-Shift lenses were previously seen as a very specialist lens and its job was to correct distortions in images not create them. The Tilt-Shift lens mainly helped architectural photographers to correct perspective in buildings by reducing the convergence of parallel lines and foreshortening effects of shooting up at tall buildings. It essentially tried to combat these problems by splitting the camera lens in two and allowing the lens barrel itself to be tilted and shifted separately to the cameras focal plane thereby correcting a lot of the distortions. The tilt-shift term was largely unheard of outside of the architectural photographers community for many years and it wasn't until recently that the phrase became more mainstream and that is largely due to the huge boon in mobile apps and their ability to recreate 'tilt-shift' effect through software. When I say recreate the effect I mean that the software was able to create planes of focus within an image and weren't designed for correcting parallel line distortions whatsoever. As a result there came along a sea of images that made everything look like miniatures by heavily blurring foreground and background elements. 

So here we have a quick example of a classic 'tilt-shift' filter being applied within the popular Snapseed app. The image  on the left is without and the image on the right is with it applied. Hopefully you can see what I mean by the 'miniature effect'.

So after the rise of the tilt-shift effect actually being used to distort images with its properties in filters, plugins and apps there appeared to be an opening to actually recreate something similar in-camera. Granted you could just the original tilt-shift lens, after all they were, and still are being used for its intended purpose by architectural photographers but those lens are very expensive indeed. The reason for the cost is not unsurprising seeing as there is a considerable amount of magic happening in a very small space, not only is all the tilting and shifting going on but also in actually focusing the resulting image and all the usual aperture controls as well. So with the prohibitive cost of tilt-shift lens making them all but for commercial purposes there did seem to be a gap in the market for something maybe not quite as complex, and it didn't need to be, after all it doesn't need to correct distortions to a professional level but it does need to be more cost effective; enter Lensbaby.

Lensbaby as company has been around for a while now and they certainly capitalised on an idea that people do still love to play with effects in-camera, not just in post. The lens of theirs that I have is the 50mm Composer Pro with double glass optic and its essentially just the 'tilt' part of a 'tilt-shift' lens. That means that with its ball joint in the middle of the lens barrel you can tilt the entire plane of focus, let me explain in these diagrams below what I mean.

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A normal lens will have a flat plane of focus that is always inline with the film/chip, this means that everything on the same focal plane as the focal point will be in-focus. The amount of objects in and out of focus in front and behind that plane are more or less in focus based on aperture used. The difference with a tilt lens is that you can adjust the actual plane of focus by tilting the front part of the lens up and down or even side to side. In doing so means that you can choose where the slices of focus appear. For example that original landscape shot I showed you earlier, the one where I applied a tilt-shift filter to it, I could of achieved that same look by tilting my Lensbaby Composer pro up and focusing on that old rusty winch. Everything above and below it would be out of focus regardless of whether or not it was closer or further away purely because it was not on the same focal plane.

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In short you can create some really cool effects with composer pro and I've used it on nearly every shoot I did last year. I think one of the best things for me is that it does reintroduce that fun aspect of shooting and experimenting again, you don't need to be too precious with it and you really do feel like you can try different things without the pressure of worrying about the polished results. For starters its not auto-focus so that takes some getting used to but with a sliver of a focal plane anyway you don't really need to worry too much about tack sharp focusing. The lens can't feedback to your camera either, so it can't be metered or adjusted using the auto settings and the aperture can't be changed from the onboard controls either. In fact the apertures are actually manually dropped in and out via a magnet on a stick. Thats correct, a magnet on a stick that you thrust into the lens cavity to remove or install different aperture rings. Granted its hardly very user friendly but after a bit of experimenting you know which aperture creates the effect you're after at certain distances and tend to stick to it, you certainly aren't using the apertures to adjust lighting you would definitely leave that to the shutter speed and ISO.

For the keen eyed among you, you may have noticed that the shots I take don't actually have a 'slice' of focus like a true tilt-shift lens but rather a spot focus, this is because the composer pro double glass optic does just that, it creates a spot that blurs outwards from its centre. To achieve the true tilt look they do a Composer Pro with Edge 80 optic that creates a slice of focus. Its this effect that is more reminiscent of the filter effects and the 'miniatures' look but seeing as I was mainly shooting portraits with mine I opted for the 50mm Composer Pro. Personally I love this lens and for less than a couple of hundred quid its well worth it for anybody who loves the whole photographic experience of playing and experimenting with different ideas and techniques. Don't get me wrong though I love digital manipulation as much as everybody else but I really don't think that the effects created with this lens can be replicated in post production and its for that reason that I will be probing the interior of my Lensbaby with my magnet on a stick for the foreseeable future.

For more information then head on over to the Lensbaby website and if you've had experiences with any of the Lensbaby products yourself then let me know as I'd love to hear your thoughts.