Stereo Sweetener for a 1/8" Sync Mod

A Strobist reader who cryptically goes by "bleeblubleeblah" last year posted may what well be the nicest walk-thru to date of hacking a Nikon SB-600 speedlight to get a remote 1/8" sync jack.

And as sweet as that looks, someone has hacked the idea to make it significantly better.

How to improve your 1/8" DIY jacks, inside. Read more »

On Assignment: HoCoPoLitSo

Sometimes you happen upon beautiful window light for a portrait, and there is no sense even unpacking a speedlight -- just frame, and snap away.

Alas, this portrait of Ellen Kennedy was not one of those times.

I photographed Ellen, founder of the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, in her home office for the Columbia Archives last week. The window light was beautiful, but not in a way that would translate well in my camera.

So I decided to recreate that light with a lower, camera-friendly contrast range using a pair of SB-800s. Read more »

Chris Crisman Finds Inspiration at Home

Paging through a recent issue of Fast Company, I came across a Chris Crisman photo similar to the one above. I loved the light, and got in touch with him to talk about it.

As it turns out, the light wasn't even the interesting part. Read more »

And Now, Your Lighting Case Pr0n

I am a big fan the ThinkTank Logistics Manager case. If you think Airport International Security on steroids, you won't be far off.

It can swallow up a ton of lighting gear, too. Four Profoto Acute packs and 4 heads is no problem. And because it is about the size of a Tokyo apartment, you can configure it just about any way you want. Which is the point of this spot-on video and the many config pictures on the product page.

And then there's that music. Chicka-chicka wow-wow…

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Where Even PocketWizard Dare Not Tread

And now, your Moment of Zen.

Many thanks to Strobist reader Chano Reus for the heads-up on a Spanish-language blog post detailing the light-painting … of an entire city.

No fewer than fifty photographers in the Asociación Fotográfica de Toledo participated in the making of this complex and highly choreographed image of Toledo, Spain.

NOTE: The post now has English and Spanish versions embedded within the copy. Thanks for that!

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LumiQuest Softbox-III Gets a Big Brother

Shown at left is one of my most used light mods, the LumiQuest SoftBox-III. It has just been supersized from 8x9" to 10x14" and released as the LumiQuest SoftBox LTp. (Not to worry -- you can still get the SB III, too. Otherwise I would not be posting this until I had stocked up on SB-IIIs…)

So yeah, bigger -- sure. But why 10x14 inches?

There's actually a pretty good reason for that. Read more »

On Assignment: Standing Behind Their Work

Ever see a thriller movie where someone (usually Matt Damon) is talking to the bad CIA guys while they sit in their office even as Damon has them zeroed in from across the street?

That'll soon be implausible if Dianna and Wayne Wilhelm any say about it. They are building (and retrofitting) government buildings with normal-looking, 1/2" glass that will stop a metal jacketed 9mm round at point blank range. And within two months, glass of that same thickness will be stopping rounds from high-powered rifles. Really cool stuff.

I was assigned to shoot the Wilhelms for a BizMo cover, and thought I would take advantage of the fact that this new laminated ballistic glass is also optically decent. So I shot them through a piece of glass that already had stopped five 9mm rounds in an earlier demonstration. Read more »