Thank you!

looking forward to seeing what you make with it Eli!

that would great to watch :D

Finish him!

Do you think they need to make a polished one directly for Bowens mount for flash or do you think adapting the SA-P to flash is suitable? I'm finding a little play in the SA-P which could be a lower tolerance due to it being a pre-production model but I'd really like to see a dedicated flash option. And way more gobos.

@@robhallphoto it really needs to be a dedicated Bowens mount thing. 1- to fit over larger lights like an AD600 or QT-1200. 2- less play in the mount for greater reliability at odd angles. 3- product photography doesn't just need 'gobo' plates or a round aperture but on the fly light shaping. For example, imagine you want to illuminate the rectangular label on a bottle but nothing else- the only way you'd be able to do that with 'gobo's is to cut out your own each time which is a lot of wasted time with trial and error. The way that certain 'dedo' lights and broncolor's picolight projector get around this is by having straight edge aperture blades that can be moved independently of one another.

Yeah some thick red drapes will be a nice addition

Pixapro in the UK and Strobepro has one in Canada. I may need to try one of those.

@@robhallphoto Yeah got my fingers crossed for black friday coming soon as I want to buy it :)

The background isn't very dark, it's the same background that I'm talking in front of. There's just very little light on it in the b roll.

And no I havent compared the VL300 to the S30 in power, but I know from using both it's not even close, the differences in the S30 head are not enough to make up the 10x wattage.

Honestly, if I were looking to emulate a Profoto hard box I’d just cut a hole in a bowens black plastic bulb cover. All it does is flag the indirect light so that all that hits the model is the direct light from the barebulb. Can’t say I find it much different than a snoot.

Sure the AD600 Pro can be used indoors and outdoors, but no it can’t be used with the SA-17 / SA-P because the flash tube is too large for it to mount.

First thing I tried! still filled in the background too much for my tastes. Might work if closer but because I needed the negative space to show the shadow “stage light”, preventing me from getting it any closer. Snoot worked much better with the short distances.

You could, although I would not recommend it. Optical snoots are innefficient, the SA-17 adapter reduces light output. Pair that with the ML60 being a weak LED to begin with and the brightness of the rig would be heavily restricted.

Idk what the odds are but I'm just glad I shot mine the day before him.

I never spend 40-50 hours editing any session. Outside of the commercial applications where it is fairly compensated, committing 100% to every distributed image will bleed most photo businesses dry. So if you aren't working with brands that are paying it, don't put forth that type of effort on every image. Yes, you want to be able to display work that is representative of your peak effort, but your time investment needs to make financial sense as well. Editing/Retouching is like building a computer, the difference is diminished the more you put into it (time for retouching, money for a computer). Meaning you can take a photo from 0-90% with little time, 90-95% with moderate time, but 95-100% takes an extremely long time. If you want to distribute under a volume model, you have to accept a slight reduction in quality. And if you want to distribute under a quality model, you have to accept a significant reduction in quantity. Either can work, hence the reason there are $500 wedding photographers and $10000 wedding photographers. 200 portraits being given away for TFP, and single portraits selling for $4000 as wall art. The important thing is that you build a business model that is sustainable and profitable, and then manage expectations with clients prior to working with them.

A lot of girls that are into "beauty" actually have rather bad skin. This may just be the consequence of daily applying make-up and not properly removing and cleansing every day. Or bad diet. Or hormone overload. If the bad skin is a given, it becomes like a commercial thing. Do you want to charge for retouching it. Focus on getting straight out of camera (SOOC) at your level of technical and artistic ambition (realistically). Have a large display at the shoot to look at profile corrected pictures with the model. When model asks, "can you retouch my skin" then you could answer that there is X hours work in there and you will have to charge for that. Now the hours are part of your business model. I prefer to use Camera Raw (=Lightroom) but if you tether shoot into Capture One, you can apply a profile and mark a photo for sharing with others in the studio and Capture One then runs these shots through a server process - you could have, say, a 10" tablet with the Capture One browsing/viewing client app and your model (or art director) will only see the ones you allowed to come through. Note that some tools now can clean up skin with AI and just sliding a slider changes skin improvement from none to realistic to plastic. That is "seconds" rather than 50 hours. As to the SOOC, if you shoot irregular skin, start with the softest most diffuse light you can create and SOOC will look a lot better already. If you really need 40-50 hours after all that, consider to give the skin work to a post house (a person or business specialized in this work). They will need 1/10th or less of your hours and even do more in that. Start with your profile corrections and make sure your Lightroom corrections are in an XMP. Now I would see if I could export these files in a way I can have a couple copies of the same image in a .pdf file and if you have more than one, same for the others. Open the pdf and in the pdf viewer make your annotations on your images as instructions to the post house. Then save the pdf with annotations. Now you are doing what Ansel Adams and all the other big names did between them and their lab assistants. Just make sure your model can pay the bill of the post house or else you have an out of pocket money bleeder instead of hours only. And also make sure you take the best approach in your business model. It seems you are starting this and the AI tool may be the way to go, not the post house. Also note that anybody can start a post house, so make sure they can do what you need before committing to costs. Same with tools. Prevent disappointments with yourself and your models. SOOC once over. If your model wants Hollywood (butterfly, many names) lighting - this is very hard light - then talk skin beforehand. Same with Rembrandt, narrow or broad lighting that goes across the face and needs a level of hardness to work well. So if the skin of the model does not collaborate, move e.g. to Peter Hurley lighting (but make the source even more diffuse than he does). If a girl with a round face wants to look a bit thinner in the photo, you could try narrow lighting (where the visible side of the head of the model has little light, is in shade) but with bad skin search for a way to have both soft light and darker shade - for instance with a large softbox mimicking a window and a black flag on the opposite side to get dark enough shade. If that softbox is large enough and has enough diffusion, you still may end up with less visible irregularities in model's skin. Practice with "feathering" in these lighting use cases too.

Not positive as I don't have one anymore, but since the bulb is more narrow it should fit. No idea what that means for light leakage though.

@@robhallphoto thank you for the answer!

😑