Thursday, March 17, 2011

The use of a Super Boom and a Small Octa.

Hey everyone! Long time since I posted here! This is greatly due to the advancements I have been making to have a legitimate photography business and....I post random photographs on Tumblr and they explain themselves where this blog I go into more detail.

This time I will be talking about my smaller 3 foot Octabank and how I use it. This model is made by Photoflex; their offerings are decent in quality in quality and their modifiers are  reasonable for the price. Even their MSRP are great for these modifiers so go and try them out! These things can be had also online for cheap if 2nd hand, but really for a new modifier is worth it since Photoflex modifiers get really wrinkled too when packed up many times!

Octa set up

The neat thing about an Octa is that you really cant go wrong with a photograph. It offers clean even light because of the shape, its a roundish box without hard right angles to deal with. Unlike squares or rectangles that generally have a large hot spot in the middle and an octa minimizes that with the shape and layers of diffusion. I still use them allot, but they are  tricky to use head on, so feather the light! There is however still a hotspot on a octa, but not as strong as something like a rectangle so dont think you are off the hook for that! This is accomplished by two panels of diffusion along with the circular shape. The one outside is the 2nd layer you can see while insider theres an inner layer that is graduated to even out the light. The inside of the new Photoflex Octabanks have Velcro inside of them to use inserts of silver or gold! that can creat a more specular source that is intense if using silver, or intense and warm using gold You can mix and match to what you like! I also sometimes shoot without the front outer diffusion layer to turn it into a large white reflector! Pretty neat trick! It can be similar is performance to a beauty dish, but it sure isnt one!

To effectively use my Octa I position it to use it as a main light. Gernerally for me its used slightly abolve the head to cast down a shadow on the face:

Octa above

To minimize the effect I use a large reflector under the subject or to the side to evenly fill in the shadows since the octa is throwing even light to begin with. This is the result:

Octa with Fill

Thanks to my brother for helping out! Go try and use an octabank and see what you can do with it!

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