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More Cheapie Soft Box Photos

Today I added the strobe lights to my small little soft box setup. The results I got before weren't very good. These results were much better, even though the old ones look just fine after trips through Aperture and Photoshop.

Today I added the strobes to the setup. I had pretty long exposure times last time with the camera stopped down far too much, and shadows and color casting and all manner of problems. The strobes let me fix a lot of those.

Here's the current setup:

Soft Box Setup

(Note: the halogen lamp is just in its storage spot. I doubt I'll ever use it for photos.)

All of these photos were shot with the Canon 50mm, f/1.8 lens, manually focused.

Pvc Cement

This was shot at f/11, 1/250. The Alien Bees were set to full power, but I had the honeycomb filters on and that severely limited the light and the other was bouncing off the inside of a reflective umbrella. These shots were a little underexposed (you can see a little grey around the edges). In fact, they probably all were. The LCD on the back of the XT shows things a lot brighter than they appear on the computer. I'll have to remember that.

Golf Balls

f/11, 1/200. I left the lights pretty bright. You can see how little an effect the "in-softbox" lights had since there's still a subtle shadow beneath the bottom ball. I'm happy with this shot, though I know I shouldn't be.

Little Statues

Shot at f/5.6, 1/250. I had to bump the Alien Bees down to about 1/16 for this shot, and I moved them to where you see them in the shot above.

Kitty Statue

f/11, 1/250. I give this one an "eh." The Alien Bees were set to about the same - about 1/16. At one point I blew them up to 1/4 and shot some photos at f/5.6 (and some at 1/8 and f/8 in between) but, frankly, the images looked about the same. All of 'em. So, I just chose this one. I could have just as easily chosen one of the f/5.6 or the f/8 shots.

3 Responses to "More Cheapie Soft Box Photos"

  1. Nice work-- how're the AB radio triggers working out for you?

  2. [quote comment="37948"]Nice work-- how're the AB radio triggers working out for you?[/quote]

    Great. I haven't pushed them 150 feet away from the camera or anything, but I'm very happy. For the price I paid, I think they're pretty incredible. No way I was going to get Pocket Wizards to start out.

  3. Ahhh.. i see now 🙂