Einstein Setup

[pierceography]

I finally ordered the PCB Einstein and CyberSync Commander I've been eying for awhile tonight. I plan on doing a fairly basic setup in my basement as a small studio to play around with lighting. I also have a 580ex II that I'll use in slave mode as a secondary light.

Most (all) of my experience aside from having my speedlight in the hotshoe is natural light.

So what advice can anyone offer to a beginner at off camera lighting?

Thanks, guys!

 

[RLPhoto]

Find your style of lighting. Do you prefer hard, soft, or in between? Studio strobes allow for so much more possibilities than just speedlites. I found out that eventually one or two strobes wasnt enough... Now I have four of them.

 

[gary samples]

love PCB Einstein's have four use them with soft boxes
they shoot humming birds real nice to !.

 

[pierceography]

You guys are really killing my budget. (But being a photography nerd this comes a no surprise).

But thank you for the advice! I'm pretty exited to get started with my own "studio". I've been almost all natural light to this point, and looking forward to the next challenge.

My current plan is the single Einstein with my speedlight, and hopefully upgrade from there where I need it. But it's pretty hard to lay off the lens upgrade bug.... Got that 35mm Siggy in mind, and the 24mm ts-e too.

 

[pwp]

Welcome to Planet Einstein. I love these lights. The very last of my overpriced, heavy but tough Profoto monolights and floorpacks and modifiers are currently for sale. I now work with six Einsteins, all sorts of PCB modifiers, batteries, CyberSync and "Mission Control" of the Einstein system, the Cyber Commander which allows you to remotely control ALL functions of up to 16 Einsteins. The two high powered Profoto Pro6 2400 w/s floorpacks were a necessity back when we were tied to 100 iso for quality output. They have seen little use in the past few years. Now clean output at 400iso, 800iso and way beyond has made extreme powered lighting rigs all but redundant. Hell, I used to rely on a monstrous Profoto Pro5 4800 w/s pack to get the output needed for 100 iso. It's nickname was Godzilla. You needed sunglasses. I'm sure I used to have a lustrous studio tan. Now I often value the fact you can dial an Einstein right down to around 2.5 w/s.

One Einstein is a great start to a highly configurable system you can expand as your projects and budgets allow. Are the walls and ceiling of your basement studio white? If not, your next most valuable buy will be a large can of white paint. Experiment with your camera tethered to your computer to get a good, immediate large scale view of what you are achieving with your light. Bounce flash should be your friend. For harder light, push the Einstein closer to the ceiling/wall. For softer light, reduce the distance. You can do a lot with one light, particularly if you get clever with reflectors. Large sheets of stiff white cardboard are as good as anything.

-PW

 

[jonathan7007]

Paul, an alternate idea about color on small studio walls: black. White surfaces near a set bounce unintended light back into the field of view. Black, flat, offers the least chance of color shift, too. I totally agree about a set of white (black on other side) Fom-Cor boards always available. 32x40-inch size sold in hardware stores where I live, bigger in art supply stores. To the OP: cut this Fom-Cor into all kinds of light modifiers.

I miss my studio of years past.

 

[TrumpetPower!]

So, first, you can have my four Einsteins...when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.

That out of the way, since the topic has shifted to wall color...you actually want both black and white, often at the same time.

My solution was to paint the walls white and make a bunch of black velvet drapes, including ones I can stretch across the ceiling. With one each black and white Savage vinyl backdrop the same dimensions as the floor, I can turn the room into a black box, a white box, or any combination of either. In a 50' cube of a studio, you don't have to worry about undesired bounce. In your typical suburban home, if you want to control bounce, your only choice is something like what I've done.

In a similar vein...your local home improvement store will sell inexpensive solid styrofoam insulation in 4' x 8' sheets. One side will be flat neutral white (with a clear plastic protective coating with writing designed to be peeled off and discarded) and the other side will be silvered. These make for awesome monster-sized reflectors! You can also paint the white side black (the things are dirt cheap, so get as many as you need) and you've now got an impromptu room divider / giant barn door / whatever. With a bit of tape, you can turn them into v-flats and paint them any color you like. You can also peel off the silvered side if you want white and black or black and black (or white and white or whatever). Also look for 2' x 4' sheets of the same stuff in the same section, both sizes in practically any thickness you could want. All of these you can cut down however you like with just a utility knife.

Enjoy!

b&