Lighting Reviews

One of the first lighting kits I ever owned was a set of Smith-Victor Adapta-Lights that had screw-base sockets for photoflood lamps. Son of a gun, the company still offers Adapta-Lights as an entry-level solution for beginning portrait photographers who want to work with hot lights. On the other hand, if you prefer making portraits using electronic flash, Smith-Victor’s three-light FL700K Strobe Light Kit may be just what you’re looking for.

The FL700K Strobe Light Kit that I tested is designed for amateur photographers and aspiring pros and contains two FLC300 (320 ws) FlashLite and one 110i (110 ws) FlashLite monolights. The FLC300 monolights offer continuously variable flash power settings, a test button, a ready light, and an optical slave for wireless triggering and have an umbrella stand adapter that’s compatible with 3/8” through 5/8” light stand posts. To expand the kit’s capabilities, Smith-Victor offers more than 100 accessories and light modifiers for the FLC300 monolights, including softboxes, reflectors, snoots, grids, and barn doors. The 110i monolight has a full- or half-power setting, optical slave, small built-in reflector, and umbrella mount. When used together, all three lights give you lots of flexibility for lighting studio or on-location portraits.

Speedotron’s power pack and head systems are the studio lighting world’s equivalent of the American muscle car. They’re powerful, made in the U.S.A., and ruggedly built to take hard use. Since its beginnings the company has offered two lines of lighting systems for photographers with different requirements. The premium-priced Black Line is intended for commercial shooters, while Brown Line products are aimed at portrait photographers, yet when used normally both have similar quality, reliability, and longevity.

Studio lighting equipment is available in either continuous or electronic flash configurations. Continuous lighting is “on” continuously, much like a light bulb or the sun for that matter, enabling you to use your in camera light meter to measure and see how the light falls on your subject. Continuous lighting sources use photoflood, quartz, or HMI (Hydrargyrum Medium-Arc Iodide) bulbs, which can be hot, leading to the use of the term “hot lights.” An increasing number of continuous lighting tools use Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) or LEDs, producing what are, in effect, “cool” hot lights.

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are a highly efficient way to provide additional illumination to your shot. Not only are they small and portable, but LEDs consume far less power than tungsten units, can last over 100,000 hours, and give off little or no heat. If you are looking for studio lights that are easily metered (because they can stay on all day), cool to the touch, color temperature...

As studio lights have gotten bigger and shoe-mount flashes more sophisticated, on-location photographers increasingly have reached for speedlights to solve lighting problems.

Like many photographers, I am always looking for lighting devices that will improve the way my subject looks and also be very easy to use.

I've had many opportunities to work with battery-operated studio strobe systems. My problem with them was that they were heavy and bulky, not powerful enough, or simply too costly. Then I came upon the Opus Pro OPL-L300 location kit. I immediately noted that the 300 ws monolights were compact. Then I hefted the battery pack. Hmm, not bad, I thought. I could actually carry...