Umbrella

Got my shipment from MPEX, and immediately put it together. I was a little annoyed that they would not let me add to my shipment once I had placed the order and called back a few hours later, but they shipment did arrive in timely fashion. The light stand (lumopro 604) is very nice, with aluminum tightening rings when I thought they were usually plastic. I would definitely recommend it, and it is 1/3 less than the Bogen and basically identical. Wish I had bought 2 because they are always out of stock and I waited about two months to buy this one.

The flash mount brackets are Aluminum with teeth instead of plastic that rely on tension for locking (and I would definitely recommend them). However, I didn't get an umbrella yet (too late to add one to my order, and B&H and Adorama were out of stock of the one I wanted last week. B&H emailed me letting me know that they are in stock, but until I have time to get one, I broke off the bottom of a regular white umbrella and started shooting.


For the most part I am generally satisfied with the results, though it was by no means a magic cure to solve my lighting problems.


I also took some comparison shots of the light with the umbrella vs ambient light. The photo on the left is the ambient photo.


With the Superman model, I compared the flash through the umbrella vs the flash directly from the strobe. It's becoming more obvious that my Superman model does not work well for these comparisons because of his angular features the transitional areas really never happen, and every kind of light makes him shine. I think the results would be much more noticeable if I were to use a model with less angular features as the transitional areas would be more obvious.


The transitional areas do appear slightly softer, but this requires more study. The white balancing seems to work much better with the flash than with the ambient lighting.