Umbrella Brackets are in! Now I Have a Off Camera Flash Setup

Oh man is it a good day now! Rain is about to hit the Bay Area again and UPS quickly delivered one of my recent orders! What are they? Manfrotto 026 Lite Tite Brackets! They are also known as an Umbrella Bracket, or a swivel bracket and are essential to make flash off camera on a stand.

The Manfrotto 026 bracket was chosen because, well, its a tank. Manfrotto makes top notch stuff, and it costs to have their equipment. Many strobist wouldn't bother to buy such a bracket, but I am down for product that had great emphasis on design and is priced just right. Seriously, if you decided to get into photography as a hobby, or a business, you are getting into a expensive one because stuff like this might sound like a bunch of money added up but its worth it for the performance it will give you to get your shots done.

To use one of these means you want to mount a strobe/flash on a light stand of sorts, a clamp, or for using a modifier that has a shaft like an umbrella. But to get the flash on you need another bracket called a flash bracket or cold shoe. Its just a fake hot shoe to tighten your light onto like you do on your camera. What I am doing for now is using the foot that came with my Canon 580exII. If you never looked at your foot for you flash, take note on the bottom that there is a threaded hole for just doing that! But I dont want to take it on and off all the time so I am getting some flash brackets soon just for these umbrella brackets.

What comes with these umbrella brackets are the bracket itself and a male stud and a female stud (har har har). These are the key players (har har) to getting the whole flash party started (wowwww). Seriously if you are missing any of these, it will make your bracket useless. The male stud is used to connect any type of shoe or connector to angle with the umbrella that goes on the top. Excuse the photo, but the bracket is upside down, and the silver fastener is where the male stud stays and that is the top of the bracket. The female stud is used in specific situations on the bottom part of the bracket to connect to other threaded bases. Most of the time you wont even use it, but if you have an extra male stud like I have on this Nikon flash and foot, then you can do something pretty neat with a Manfrotto Super Clam if you have one already.

So what if you just have a light stand? What do I need to just get my lame flash off my camera and start doing stuff? Well this is exactly what is needed:

The order in how they go is just like so. When you put on your light modifier like an umbrella, the shaft is going to be at an angle going down and the flash will be pointing into the umbrella going up to get diffused or in a shoot thought style.

Once you get all that tightened together you are now off camera! But to fire the flash you do need a trigger, and I will talk about that in a later entry. However, if you have a flash that works off inferred light, then you are pretty much set!

And the stand should look just like this! Ha, I am joking. The equipment is all up to you, but in the end this is what it should look like. You can angle the flash head, and if that is not enough you can use the umbrella bracket. If you need to turn it, just loosen the male or female stud an turn it if you stand is kinda in the way of other things.

I said before you can use these in many other situations. With the gear I have I have two other methods. And when you look at them, none of them are the right way, or the wrong way to mount a flash off camera. You roll with what you have, and just make it happen. I hope these ways enlighten you how to use your bracket when you forget a stand or two!

The first way I like to use my bracket's is with my clamps. What you take is your female stud and if you have an extra male stud you fix them together and mount the bottom of the umbrella bracket to the to the top of the super clamp. Take the other female stud and a cold shoe with your flash and tie it all together and presto! You have an off camera rig that can go onto a rail, tree, door, table, you name it! If its less than 3 inches, you can clamp! Another neat way is using a Manfrotto Magic Arm that allows you to articulate the flash even more especially if located in really tight spots!

Next is if you have your bracket perhaps in a bag with everything needed but you kind of dont have a clamp, or a light stand, but you do have a tripod! Yep, this umbrella bracket can even go onto a tripod and is now a light stand (and much more rigid than any other lightstand you might ever find at the cost of height..) What you just need to do is tighten the tripod screw onto the female stud and you are pretty much set. For super clamps, there are also combination studs that are like the paired male and female studs for the base.

I think that is for now on these guys. If you have any other questions, please make a comment or shoot me an email! I look forward to the next piece of equipment you should know about and have in your collection of gadgets to pull some sick shots!

Here is a pic on how I used my tripod to pull of taking a quick and dirty pick of the gear needed to put your flash on a stand. See how useful the tripod is?!?!?!