Last weekend I had some time to do work some more with the Ezybox Hotshoe. Here’s a sample of what can be achieved with it.
| Portrait taken with Ezybox |
| Natural light |
| setup: Ezybox Hotshoe ‘charged’ with a 580EX on a standard Manfrotto light stand |
This image illustrates few important points of using the Ezybox Hotshoe:
- Color Temperature – using a flash as main light provides us with a consistent color temperature of about 5500oK, the shadow where the girl is placed is actually much colder, which is visible on comparison image on the right. The portrait is much pleasing with the neutral-warm tones
- Light Control The light of the moment was quite harsh, coming slightly from the back and leaving most of the face in shadow. The Ezybox+580EX were used as main light. This was achieved in this case by decreasing the ambient exposure by 1 stop and using the flash without exposure compensation
- Portability Sorry to state the obvious but it’s really nice to have creative control over the light in the middle of the garden
The flash was used in automatic exposure mode (E-TTL) triggered by the controlled wireless ST-E2 on the camera.
is this info useful to you? Drop me a line with comments or questions. A more detailed review on handling the Ezybox Hotshoe is coming. If you have questions, now is the moment. – Gerard
Hi Gerard, I was weighing up the purchase of a portable soft light and I must say I found your blog exceedingly useful in guiding me towards the Ezybox. Congrats on the website! Am surprised you don’t get more comments – you might try promoting it via a Flickr page or something like that.
Best of luck!
Brian
Hi!
I found your site today (linked from Flickr I think) and think it’s really great!
Great examples and experiments. I could really use one of those foldable softboxes btw…
Did you find the adapter for the Canon 580 inside the package of the EzyBox? I found an adapter for studio flashes, not an adapter like your.
How can I get one of that adapters so I can use my 580 with Ezybox?
Thank you
firstly, found your site and its great and just what ive been looking for. just wondering when shooting the pic of girl on the swing you used ttl? how did the flash unit measure the correct amount of light with the ezybox on the front or does the st-e2 do the measurement? if im being a bit dim please let me know!!!
Hi Steve,
The Canon flash system uses E-TTL to determine the correct exposure. E-TTL stands for Evaluative Through The Lens (metering). It’s the sensor behind the lens and not the flash unit which meters the light from the flash and determines the correct exposure. The main advantage is that the sensor will -by design- compensate for any accessory placed in the path of the light (within the boundaries of the system capacity, such as max flash power). The other side of the coin is that, as all evaluative systems, the camera uses some guesswork to determine the exposure, that sometimes needs to be tweaked to achieve the desired effect.
In case of the girl in the swing that you’re mentioning, there was no special adjustment needed.
Hope this helps…
kr, Gerard.
Hello,
I’m a little confused about your WB explanation. What was your settings?
Flashes seem to me more colder with camera sat on daylight to match ambiant and therefore need a 1/4 CTO gel
The easybox seems to be a neat softbox…
Cheers
Hi Gerard,
I’m looking at investing in the Ezybox system, but have read some negative reviews from owners, especially about the light loss through the diffusors and the bracket being “flimsy” (see http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=487645).
A few reviewers are happy with the system though – what is your opinion?
Thanks!
Vincent,
White balance is relative. When you set your WB to X, color temperatures under X will look warmer and above X will be perceived colder. Here, the camera was set to Manual White Balance on 6000K.
That’s why the image with the flash (at 5500K) is slightly warmer than neutral.
-greetz, Gerard.
Paul,
I visited the stand of Lastolite in Photokina last September and I could see the 3rd generation softbox bracket in display.
The first gen, (probably the one it’s being discussed in the post you mentioned) had few flaws. Mine does not bend but the height control to center the flash does not tight up completely. I fixed that with some duct tape on the back of the slider guide.
The next gen (2nd) fixed all those problems. I’ve a 2nd gen Ezybox 60 and it stays in place w/o problems. The 3rd gen bracket is really fancy (I want one!), the piece that holds the flash pivots to allow you to turn it easily (to place the IR sensor in your direction) and the flash window is a lot bigger.
Regarding the comments about light loss, that’s a common misunderstanding. A camera flash uses a parabolic reflector and a fresnel lens to ensure maximal light output from the Xenon bulb to the front. The zoom function serves to further optimize that beam of light by illuminating only the part of the subject visible through the lens.
That light is also very directional (by design) and small in surface. What you achieve with a modifier (softbox or umbrella) is to make the size of the light source bigger and diffuse it, so that the rays of light go in all directions. These two elements combined make for ‘soft’ light.
The amount of light output from the flash is limited, and while in a tight beam it seems it’s a lot, when you spread it to cover a wide surface, the amount of light for surface unit becomes limited.
Imagine this: you have a spoon of strawberry jam. If you put that onto a cookie, you’ll have a cookie with lots of jam on it. Now, instead, you want a toast, so you take another spoon of jam and spread it on the bread. Now the jam is spread in a thin layer, but the amount is the same. You can also eat more
of the toast than of the cookie
Those light loss comparisons are all flawed. If you want to have soft light you need to accept the limitations. Get the light closer to your subject and increase your ISO into acceptable ranges (200-400) to optimize the use of the output power of the flash unit.
Hope this helps with your choice. — good shooting!
-Gerard.