Tag Archives: 580 EX

Ezybox Hotshoe Handle: The neatest gadget…

Posted by gerard.maas on July 6, 2007 5 comments

Light is the basis of all photography work. As you can see in a lot of my posts, I try hard to shape and place the light in the right place where it’s needed in a dynamic and changing way, to complement the subject of my attention.

Hand holding my modifiers is sometimes the only way to get them where I want them, but manufacturers often forget about ergonomics on this front. Like you can see here (below), those and mounts are not made to comfortably handhold

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Model: Leen, MU by Inge VBD Model: Twiggy, MU by Anneke Wastyn

There’s a very pleasing change in that respect… I received a small package today with the neatest handgrip I’ve ever seen. It uses a sectioned column (like a monopod) and a rubber handgrip. It’s made by Lastolite to fit its Ezybox Hotshoe. On the top it has a standard lightstand knob, so I’ll guess I’ll be playing around with it and all my Manfrotto attachments.
Here some quick pics done with an improvised bg.
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(I couldn’t get a pic of the second section extended ’cause my bg was not big enough ;-) )I’ll be taking this new accessory with me in the coming shots, so expect to have some more posts about it in the near future.Gerard.

Strong portraits

Posted by gerard.maas on June 29, 2007 1 comments

It was a great pleasure to work with such capable and great models. Hopefuly I did them some justice preserving their beautiness in pixels.

Most of the portrait work was done using speedlites in combination with a Lastolite Ezybox 60cm.
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Ezybox Hotshoe in action

Posted by gerard.maas on May 2, 2007 9 comments

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.

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Portrait taken with Ezybox
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Natural light
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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

Ezybox Hotshoe in the nature

Posted by gerard.maas on March 4, 2007 None comments

This is a small test I did while walking in the woods. It was a rainy day and the natural light was very soft but totally unidirectional, revealing little structure in this mushroom. A perfect opportunity to try the Ezybox Hotshoe I was carrying with me during the walk.

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Ezybox Hotshoe on the side
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Direct flash on camera
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Natural diffused light

The enhancing effect of the Ezybox on the image is evident. The light is very soft when compared to the bare flash on the camera, while the directionality reveals structure and creates a more three dimensional image of the mushroom.

I held the flash in position improvising with a stick of wood as ‘flash stand’. The flash was a Canon 580EX controlled wireless from the camera with a ST-E2 Wireless controller. The lateral placement of the Ezybox allows the line of sight between the controller on camera and the slaved flash on the Exzybox hotshoe mount.

Few minutes after the Ezybox was packed down and we could continue with the walk before the rain got us.

812 This is an image of the setup showing the Ezybox hotshoe clamped down with a piece of wood in the stand socket. A little bit of creativity avoid carrying too much equipment around

I’m still trying out the possibilities of this practical flash difusser. I’ll keep reporting my findings…

Frozen Time

Posted by gerard.maas on January 24, 2007 None comments

It seems logical to think about freezing during the winter, but fact is that we haven’t seen the first temperature under 0oC. Freezing time seems as appropriate.

Read more >>>

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Focal Lenghts and Picture Styles

Posted by gerard.maas on November 22, 2006 None comments

Focal Lenght

Certainly one critical decision point in any photography is the lens to be used. While it’s actually distance which determines the perspective on a subject, a focal lenght of a lens will allow you to play with that distance to achieve the desired perspective and composition.

This is a small comparison of four focal lenghts on a portrait of Anne Sophie.

Thanks to Anne Sophie for being such a great model!

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17mm [EF 17-40 f/4L] 50mm [EF 50mm f/1.8 MK1]
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100mm [EF 100 f/2.8 Macro] 200mm [EF 70-200 f/4 L]

All images were exposed: 160/f5.6 ISO 200 using the quite unstable natural light (fast passing clouds) combined with a very reliable speedlite 580EX diffused with a portable Lastolite Ezybox

Picture Styles

A new feature in the latests EOS Digital SLR’s. The Picture Styles allows you to tune the response of the sensor for specifical rendition of tonalities. It’s the digital equivalent of choosing different films like de saturated Velvia or the subtle Portra.

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Standard Neutral Portrait

Litchee

Posted by gerard.maas on November 21, 2006 1 comments

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Still exploring every day stuff from another point of view. This time, with another kind of light. I masked a 580EX speedlite flash with a black card where I made a hole in the middle and placed it behind this litchee skin. The result was a great red glow like a SF cocoon that is about to explode.

Splash

Posted by gerard.maas on November 21, 2006 None comments

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We wash our hands many times a day, but how many times we realize how the water moves, splashes and flows around? Our daily life is full of wonders and details that we so often overlook.

The movement of the water on this pic was captured using flash to ‘freeze’ the action. The flash was positioned behind the hand to offer back light, both increasing the visual impact of the image and allowing to use as few flash power as possible to obtain the fastest response. I’ll be explaining this technique in more detail in the future.
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EOS 5D + EF 100f/2.8 Macro. Speedlite 580EX flash in wireless ETTL mode, controlled by a ST-E2 on the camera.

Steaming Broccoli

Posted by gerard.maas on November 20, 2006 None comments

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Backlight picture of a freshly steamed Broccoli on a spoon. Taken with an 580EX speedlite on a masked Ezybox softbox behind the spoon. The camera (EOS 5D) was set on manual mode with an EF100/f2.8 Macro lens and attached with an ST-E2 wireless flash controller to command the off-camera flash in E-TTL.

Horse Fly

Posted by gerard.maas on November 19, 2006 1 comments

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Horse Fly at 5x optical magnification. The fly was standing on a blue hortensia (it’s not an artificial background!) and lighted with a hotshoe flash off camera on the side.