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DSLR Accessories, Cheap!

by Learn More Photo Leave a Comment

I was reading an article this morning about DSLR accessories and how a company, Zeikos is producing low cost DSLR accessories like batter grips, remotes, off-camera flashes and off camera flash cables.

The prices of these Zeikos accessories is much lower than the Nikon or Canon alternatives. I cannot attest to the quality but at that price they’re worth a buy for anyone hesitating because of the high price. Many of the prices are comparable to the Craigslist or eBay used prices on similar camera accessories used.

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Filed Under: Equipment Tagged With: accessories, B&H, battery, battery grip, cheap, flash, flash cable, strobist

Official Rosco Strobist Kit

by Learn More Photo 2 Comments

This is even better than getting the free gels from Rosco or the cheap sample packs from B&H / Amvona. A Strobist gel kit.

This awesome Rosco Strobist 55-Piece Filter Kit is great for both color correcting your flash head to match your surroundings: fluorescent, tungsten and daylight. All of under $10! The kit includes the following:

  • 46 color correcting gels
  • 9 fun, colored gels, to play with
  • See a list of all the gels included here



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Filed Under: Flashes, Strobes & Lighting, General Photo & Camera Tips Tagged With: B&H, flash, gel, kit, lighting, rosco, strobist

Bouncing a Flash off the Ceiling – Lighting Test

by Learn More Photo Leave a Comment

Once you get a flash, speedlight or speedlite unit the first thing you are told is to get it off your camera. Sometimes a situation just doesn’t accommodate this – like shooting an event light a trade show, wedding or social event where it’s more important to catch the shot then get perfect lighting.

So when you can’t get your flash unit off your camera you have to do the next best thing: bounce. If you’re lucky the ceilings are low enough to accommodate bouncing, I find 8 – 12′ ceilings are best for this. Now that you know you are going to bounce your light off the ceiling do you know at what angle? The flash I demoed, the Nikon SB600, there’s 5 settings: 0° (straight at the subject, ie. not bounce), 45°, 60°, 70° and 90° (straight up). I grabbed my mannequin head (we’ll call her Sharla for obvious reasons) and did some test shots.

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Filed Under: Flashes, Strobes & Lighting Tagged With: bounce, flash, flash test, lighting, mannequin head, sb600, speedlight, speedlite

Lighting the Egg Photograph

by Learn More Photo

I remember one day in college I was sitting next to a kid in a free computer lab working on some stuff before class and he opened up a photograph of an egg that he shot for his “Advanced Commercial Photography” class. He told me that “this is the ultimate test for a photographer, perfectly lighting a white egg against a white background.” This was about a year before I bought my D70s and I thought it was a cool idea and a cool photograph.

Come to find out the kid was:

  1. a tool
  2. arrogant spoiled rich kid
  3. wrong

Lighting an egg is not the ultimate test, but a good exercise in lighting. When photographing an egg you want to eliminate as much shadow as possible but give the egg definition so it doesn’t get washed out in the white.

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Filed Under: Flashes, Strobes & Lighting Tagged With: diagram, egg, flash, lighting, photo, pictures, sb600, strobe, strobist, umbrella

Rosco Gel Samples Just Arrived

by Learn More Photo 4 Comments

I, along with every other photog-blogger in the blogosphere, has read about using the Rosco Roscolux Swatchbook available free from Rosco (beware I’ve heard there’s a major wait through Rosco) and for $0.01 now $1.95 from B&H to color a background using a flash unit.

Well it’s hard to get a hold of the Roscolux Swatchbook. I’ve seen it sell out on the B&H website in as little as 24 minutes before. Though B&H also has the Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook for the same price, and it was in stock, so I ordered it and got yesterday.

The first thing I did was remove the straight pin holding the samples together and replaced it with a clip I had previously used for embroidery floss. This allows me to remove gels easily while not making a mess of the whole situation.

Accompanying Photographs

Rosco Cinegel Swatchbook Embroidery Floss Ring Cinegels on a Ring

You can pick up a loop like that at any craft store like Joann’s near the embroidery or notions storage section.


I haven’t had a chance to play with any lighting with the gels yet. You know…work…sleep. But I’m excited to give it a try tonight or tomorrow.

I learned about these gel sample packs by reading a post on the Photography on the.net forums, using gels to create colored backgrounds. I was immediately inspired, especially by the photos posted to that thread by curtis N, agent.media and flg8r.

That was when the Internet twisted my own arm into buying the background and stand I did the video about last week.

While waiting for my delivery I looked and found some other good posts on forums about using gel samples. This post started as a question regarding the effectiveness of a colored background and saturation of the color by the gel, and includes a sample photo. Another post about using gels shows sample photographs using models and still life and also shows demonstrations where you can fill the background with the color, or hot spot the color, even a demo that appears to snoot with a color.

I also stumbled across another post where the demo was using the gel against a white wall. Though one response pointed out that using the gel on white has a tendency to reflect back onto the subject which can cause highlights in the hair to become the color of the gel. Not always a desired effect. I’m quite glad I went with the dark grey background now!

I’ll probably be working on a holder tonight, I’ve been exploding a few options:

  • Plastic Sleeve and Velcro – photo 2 – Not a big fan of the idea of putting Velcro on my flash
  • Plastic name tag – Similar to the above plastic sleeve and Velcro, seems promising
  • Mat Board and Clip – I’d probably use a magnet instead of a clip, and I’d use black mat board
  • Plastic as Clips – Appears to work well but I would rather separate the gel from the top of the flash in fear of heat transfer and melting
  • Mat Board and Snaps for Swivel Action – Is a swivel necessary? Not for me. Glad to see magnets work well though
  • Plastic Strips and Velcro – Again I’m not sure about the gel flush against the flash

As you can tell I’m kind-of being a big wussie about not melting my gel to my flash but even if is unlikely to happen I’d still rather use preventative measures.

I’ll post up my final solution I settle with. My guess is it will be a lot like the mat board with clip, except with magnets since they’re way easier to change quickly and if they’re attached I can’t lose them!


Researching these holders was a big help and lead me to request sample packets from a few other companies such as Lee and Apollo Design Technologies. We’ll see how long it takes for those sample packs to come in.

Update: Lee Gels vs. Rosco Gel Swatchbooks

The Lee Gel sample pack came almost days later. And I prefer using the Lee gels because they use larger samples which cover the flash (or my gel adapter) nicer. I managed to get my hands on a couple of the Rosco Roscolux Swatchbook and I see why they are recommended, that book has a wider variety of colors and focuses mainly on gels. Maybe I’ll do a full review of the different swatch books once I get the last one I ordered.

Filed Under: Flashes, Strobes & Lighting Tagged With: apollo, background, cinegel, DIY, Equipment, filter, flash, flickr, gel, lee, lighting, rosco, roscolux, strobist

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