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My portable kit: a love triangle between a camera, flash, and softbox
By Jacob Vorpahl | January 20, 2010
The saying goes that the best camera is the one that’s with you, and mainly that’s used to talk to about cell phone cameras, at least in recent times. That’s all well and good, but didn’t you buy that spiffy new Canon G11 or S90 (or maybe a Panasonic GF1 if you’ve got the funds) to take with you everywhere so that you always had a somewhat reliable, manual control camera with you? I did. But I found that the camera itself wasn’t enough for me. After spending so much time with off camera flash and depending on its capabilities to create the pictures inside my head, I wanted to have it with me all the time. Kind of like ” the best camera and flash are the ones that are with you”. So I set out to create a portable kit that would meet my needs.
My biggest question was: what am I trying to do with this portable kit? If I wanted to just take snapshots, I’ve already got the camera. What else would I be trying to accomplish? I decided that I would like the ability to do two things and still stay in the realm of portability: first, take portraits using a single flash as my key light; second, be able to provide off camera fill flash to use in outside/bright areas. Both goals are attainable using a single flash and both can be accomplished using equipment I already have.
First off, I need something small to carry everything in. I used to have a Canon DV camcorder that I eventually sold, but I never got rid of the carrying bag for it. It was built to be minimalistic, only carrying the camera, a spare battery, a couple of extra tapes and the AV cables. For my plans it looked like just the ticket: small, padding on the inside to protect important gear, and enough storages areas to fit everything easily and keep it divided.
Here it is, and this is with everything packed up and inside. Also, as a side note, cell phone cameras aren’t all that bad- with the exception of the last shot in this article, all the pictures were shot with with my Motorola Droid (in this case, it was the second best camera that was with me as the G11 was being photographed as part of the kit). Use what you can when you have to, right?
So, the case is taken care of, now what? Well, I don’t use any flashes outside of Nikon because I’m primarily a Nikon guy so the Nikon flash to the Canon camera is going to present an issue. I could go with a corded option using some adapters and such, but thankfully I already had a much better solution: Skyports. If you’re reading this, you probably already know what these are, but, if you don’t, they are one of a few brands of wireless triggers you can use to pop your flash when its not on the camera. Having this capability is the single biggest reason I purchased a Canon G11 over the S90, and many others, because the S90 lacks a hotshoe on top, which is where you put the transmitter for the triggers.
Another issue that arises from using two different brands is that outside of manual control with the triggers, the systems don’t talk to each other, so TTL and Auto modes are not available. Since I’m not the best at chimping (the act of taking a picture with the flash power being a guesstimate, then constantly adjusting until you get it right), I would also need a lightmeter to tell me how much juice the flash should be putting out.
So, with all that in mind, I was able to put this together:
The whole thing consists of the following (counter clockwise from the bottom left):
-Canon G11
-Sekonic light meter
-Nikon SB800
-4 Kodak Rechargable “slow dispersion” batteries (I don’t remember the exact name)
-1 homemade velcro strap with rubber backing
-bag of precut gels with velcro tabs attached
-1 Skyport reciever and 1 Skyport transmitter, along with 1 battery and PC cord
-Carry bag
-Lumiquest Softbox III
The whole thing fits together as so: the gels go in the very bottom of the bag, then I put the flash and lightmeter in sideways.
Then, I put in the divider and put the camera on top of that, so as to not have the things bouncing around in there scatching and messing each other up.
We’re reaching the capacity of this bag, so I don’t put much else in top container except the velcro strap. It doubles its usefulness by providing a little extra padding up above for the camera.
Then in front we have the Skyports, along with their cord and battery.
And that’s it. All done and ready to be taken anywhere. Oh, if you’re thinking that the softbox didn’t go inside, you’d be correct. There’s no way to get that kind of modifier inside of a little bag such as this, so it will be carried seperately (and that’s portable enough for me).
Now I have a kit that I could practicially leave in my car and have for whenever, or take it with me on short travel trips where all of my gear would be impractical. It’s light, easy to pack and unpack, not too obtrusive, and it provides with me with some nice opportunities to stretch my creative boundaries when using my point-and-shoot.
As an example, right before I typed this up, I went ahead and took a quick self portrait using everything in the bag. This is what I got:
I know I’m not the most interesting thing to look at, but, considering this is a point-and-shoot camera setup that can go anywhere with me, I’ll take it. I had the camera in one hand and the flash/softbox in the other and this is the result. Now lets put a really interesting subject in there and we can get some pretty respectable shots. UPDATE: I’ve got some more shots using this kit here.
This setup took me a mere couple of minutes to put together. Do you have anything lying around the house that you can use to create a truly portable “best camera” kit of your own? If you do, it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and put that puppy together so it’s there when you need it.
Topics: Flash, Gear, Photography | 3 Comments »
February 10th, 2010 at 3:21 am
i have just got myself a Canon G11 to use for trips.i am having problems with triggering my off cam strobes.i’m am only useing cheap 2-contact radio triggers but they work fine enough on my other DSLR’S.it works ok in C1, C2, and AUTO.but i really want it to work in MANUAL.i’v played around with settings, checked batt, read the camera user guide. what am i doing wrong? any help please.cheers danny.
February 27th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Ran into the same problem… Continuous auto focus and continuous shooting needs to be off for the wireless triggers to work. Unknown why but I almost took it back …till I figured it out.
Cheers
February 28th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I’ve been using Skyports and had the G11 in manual mode but I’ve never ran into any problems with it. I imagine a lot more people would need to be doing a “strobist kit” with the G11 for us to have a bigger pool of quirks like to figure out what is causing it and if there is any way around it.