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GADGET BAG
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Light Up Your Life
Soften
Direct flash can create harsh shadows
and hot spots. By diffusing that light, you create a more gentle
light with softer shadows that wraps around your subjects. The
result is a more balanced and pleasing image.
Diffused light in the studio often is referred to as beauty light.
This quality of light also can be advantageous to nature photography,
as it spreads out over an area, balances contrast in close-up
shots and fills shadows in a landscape scene with the feel of
natural light.
LumiQuest’s Big Bounce softens harsh and unappealing highlights.
With dimensions of 81⁄2x103⁄4 inches, the Big Bounce
works like a mini-softbox to bounce and diffuse the light from
your flash. Lightweight and small enough to fit in your pack,
the accessory attaches to your flash head via the use of Velcro®.
List Price: $38.95.
Adorama’s Strobo-Sock is a white piece of nylon material
that integrates an elastic band in the design, enabling you to
fit it over any size flash head to diffuse your light. Quick
and convenient, the tool is ultra-lightweight and can be crumpled
up and stuffed in your pocket. Eliminate ugly highlights or use
two socks at the same time to cut down the power of your light,
which can be ideal for close-up photography. List Price: $19.95
(a pair).
Bouncing light off of a white surface is a great way to soften
light. This could prove to be useful if a ceiling or wall were
available in the wilderness, but since they aren’t, you
can replicate this effect using the Metz MZ5422 Bounce Screen.
The 8x10-inch screen creates an even light over your image, and
easily attaches to your flash via Velcro®. It conveniently
folds down to slide into a pocket in your camera bag. List Price:
$74.
Chimera’s Mini and Maxi Lightbanks are designed like a
miniature studio softbox in sizes that work for field use—12x16
inches for the Mini and 16x22 inches for the Maxi. Both offer
greater diffusion than most portable units, but fold down to
fit a gadget bag. These lightbanks come with a choice of a white
or silver interior. White interiors give a slightly softer light
while silver is more efficient in its use of light. The accessories
attach to your strobe or light stand via an adapter (not included).
List Price: $80 (Mini); $99 (Maxi).
Focus
A basic flash unit simply throws out light over an area without
any bias. If you want it to fall on something specific or illuminate
a certain area in your shot, but not in another, however, then
you have to focus the direction of its output. To do this, look
at the shadow areas of your scene that you wish to illuminate,
point your flash in that direction and use an accessory to sculpt
the burst.
Accessories that focus the spread and intensity of a flash can
help you highlight a detail in a landscape. In addition, telephoto
photography can require a flash with a strong output so it can
reach your subject at a long distance. The Project-A-Flash is
designed with a Fresnel lens that concentrates the power of the
light from a wide burst to a smaller but stronger one, making
it stretch farther and reach your faraway subject. Made of a
durable plastic, the Project-A-Flash fits snugly over the front
of your flash head and is secured by a hook and loop, which is
included in the cost. List Price: $34.95.
Weighing less than three ounces, Kirk Enterprises’ Flash
X-Tender is a lightweight accessory that’s easy to take
with you in the field. Whether you need a main light or fill,
the flash extender increases the output from your flash by two
full stops while reducing the spread of the flash, an asset when
shooting with lenses 300mm or longer. This is a useful tool for
photographing wildlife in trees or anything that’s difficult
to approach closely. List Price: $42.95.
Sometimes you just want to isolate a specific subject in your
photograph without having light spill over the entire scene,
such as highlighting one flower among a group of blooms. Great
for forming this dramatic light, the LumiQuest Snoot conveniently
attaches to your flash with hook-and-loop tabs and limits the
spread of light from your flash to approximately 10 degrees.
The Snoot folds flat for convenient storage. List Price: $25.95.
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PAST GADGETS
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Gadget Bag: The Long View
May 2007
Compact super-zoom cameras offer tremendous telephotos in portable packages
By William Sawalich
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Gadget Bag: Multimedia Storage Viewers
April 2007
Back up and review your images in the field with handheld media devices
By Jon Sienkiewicz
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Gadget Bag: Have A Ballhead!
August 2006
Prized for solid construction and ease of use, ballheads are the choice of professional landscape photographers the world over
By Ted Alan Stedman |
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Gadget Bag: Sharpness Is Easy
May 2006
Tripods are indispensable, and new, exotic materials and construction make them better, lighter and stronger than ever
By Jon Sienkiewicz
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Gadget Bag: Power Hungry
July 2005
Today's batteries help satisfy our insatiable electronic gear
By Ibarionex R. Perello
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