I'm Speechless.
With just one day to go before the big, cryptic December 12th RadioPopper announcement, the following pops up on Pixsylated:Twelve Canon 580 EX II's, all equipped with RP1's in high-noon, high-sync, sunlight-killing formation.
I am pretty sure this is the first sign of the Apocalypse.
__________
UPDATE: What that bad boy looks like from the business end...
__________
Other items from the archives which straddle the line between genius and insanity:
:: DIY Off-Camera TTL Cord ::
:: The 'Umbrella Helmet' ::
-30-
__________
New to Strobist, or lighting? Start here.
Now shipping, in DVD box set or download: Lighting in Layers
Connect: Discussion Threads | Reader Photos | Twitter
Posted at 10:05 AM.
82 Comments:
I want that frame! ;-)
I want that frame! ;-)
Now this is insane...
...or sheer genius, but that's usually right next to eachother.
Agggghhh my eyes! Seriously that's probably getting into OSHA territory regarding eye damage.
wow. that's one heck of a ring light (or box light, to be more precise).
Omigosh! Ring light formation! Attack!!
Bannzaaiiiiii!
I am SOOOO over flash envy.
(keep repeating)
I am SOOOO over flash envy.
DARN.
It didn't work.
I can't figure out a need, or a way to pay for it, but it just looks cool.
Oh, and if Canon and RadioPopper want to send me a set for a couple of weeks, I'll see what fun I can have, and write about it in the paper.
Talk about a waste of money. Try some studio strobes with the right diffusers instead.
"...there were concerns that the blast might launch a cataclysmic reaction in the upper atmosphere leading to world destruction."
Nice...with all that money one could buy some real lights. Smart Move!
EEK! sunglasses are a must on that one, if not welding goggles!
I couldn't afford the batteries to power this thing, let alone the strobes :)
Now that is some serious fire power....
have we broken their server?
You could almost buy another 580EX II for the cost of the rechargeable batteries necessary to drive those...
I'm pretty sure that this was done to prove a point, the price for those 580:s would buy you a couple of Elinchrome Ranger kits which I assume would be a more convenient solution?
That think would delete the ambient in the Utah desert at high noon!
That's just out of control. At that point, doesn't it just make more sense to get some heavy-duty studio strobes?
Kind of cool as an experiment though.. can't wait to see the resulting image.
Can you see that from space?
I think we killed it!
'503 Service Temporarily Unavailable...'
Digg Effect = Strobist Effect
that is definitely NOT a softbox! Hardbox?
ryan
www.ryanhollowayphotography.com
Strobist (temporarily) kills yet another site. Interesting write-up though.
Wait - December 13th? - I thought they said December 12th
that is definitely NOT a softbox! Hardbox???
Ryan
www.ryanhollowayphotography.com
wauw, that seems like a lot of power! Hey guys i think there's a second sun outside ;-)
uhh.. What's the point? Other than being able to say, "mine's bigger than yours." For the cost of 12 speedlights, you could fund a really decent monolight kit, including an actual ringlight, and not have to worry about batteries, harsh light, and severe inconvenience...
I don't get it.
Now that is some retina burning power!
Given those cost over $300 each, ignoring the triggers, that's around/over $4k for the setup. I'm not sure I immediately see the advantage of spending so much relative to Alien Bees and a Vagabond. Unless you already have 12 of them sitting around for some other reason I guess, so they are a sunk cost.
Maybe I am missing something.
did your link kill their site with traffic? I can't get it to load...
Nuts, I'm looking forward to seeing the motocross shot. I often shoot with two or three strobes on full power when at bmx / mountain bike dirt competitions when I'm trying to get the rider "pop" against a clear blue sky. I'd love to try with twelve of the things!
I saw this blogpost earlier today. It's a big hit, so big the site is currently out of order due to it's success.
I couldn't help think ing that this is Syl's way of saying "My Schwartz is bigger than yours, McNally" ;)
whaoh! the poor guys site is almost down with all this traffic it got from this post!!!
So, $381 x 9 = $3,429, and 9 x the cost of the RP1's, you're well on your way to $5k...yikes!
John
The Strobist Effect kills another website ;)
It looks like the site has been, uh, strobisted, kind of like being slashdotted.....
when I go there, at first the images don't show up, when I reload I see an error mentioning the users bandwidth capacity.....
I saw his post on his blog earlier today. Seems to be a big hit. So big the site is currently out of service!
When I first saw this, I couldn't help thinking "His Schwartz is bigger than yours, McNally" ;)
BUMMER:
Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at pixsylated.com Port 80
I can't wait to hear why.
wauw that's a lot of power. it think there is a second sun outside ;-)
this is a situation where you *want* to blink on the count of three.
And we already destroyed there nice server. I think we need a new word for this. There is already slashdoted, how about strobed. As in David linked to your sight and you are totally strobed.
Hah, seems the site is down. Perhaps due to the overwhelming amount of clicks from Strobist?
I wanted to see the original post but it looks like Pixsylated's servers have been "Strobistified" :)
The next frame shows the guy as an X-ray.
Seems like you could buy an acute B 600R and a ring and achieve a similar effect without all that headache..
It is pretty cool though.
I'm not sure this follows any part of the "More Brains, Less Gear" credo :)
Dear Sun,
Kneel before Zod.
Love,
Syl
Looks like you might have sent him a bit of traffic. You can access the page via a mirror at http://pixsylated.com.nyud.net/2008/12/i-shot-ben-willmore-in-broad-daylight-gang-light-part-1/
If you are concerned about the nyud.net suffix I put on there, visit coralcdn.org to find out how that works.
killed it. haha.
For all those guys compaininng about the cost, in the article it's clearly stated that Canon loaned the 580EX's for the shoot.
So sure, a larger, powered light is the better and more cost effective solution, but just enjoy some interesting and cool shots with an insane amount of flashes. It's not particularly practical, but hey, it's sure FUN!! :)
I'm in love. Oh my.
Geeez!
McNally is going to be soooo jealous!
Hahaha, I think I am going to open a business for those photogs and light artists who insist on creating such kewl ideas and methods. My business is going to be insurance. I will called Insurance SE. (SE = Strobist Effect).
It's a good thing all those strobes and poppers were on lend to him. The dollars spent on those items would buy a very nice set of portables or a trip to Cancun.
All together this looks quite costly indeed - if all flashes are owned by the same person. but just imagine this as a gang thing: photographers from all over the city/state/country coming together and throwing all the flashes they own on the same frame, just to take one ultimately overpowered photo together, wouldn't that be a social activity?
I will keep the trained monkey. That or place the strobe on a stick down the back of my pants.
HolyLOL
--
chris
I'd like to see something like that except with the person standing in the center of all that flash power...
Im thinking if I could afford 12 580s I would be able to get a ring flash....Although it is a groovy looking contraption.... I would love to see a sample of what it produces!!!!
Two things:
1. As for softbox versus hardbox, at what point does a gang of hard point sources start to behave as a single, soft source? We consider light hard because it produces a sharp shadow line between the lit and unlit portions of the subject. Individually, each one of the strobes produces a hard shadow line, but taken together they should produce a stepped effect that sort of looks soft.
2. The article states that he's doing this to shoot a motorcycle flying around at 40mph. I couldn't load/locate the resulting picture, so I can't say if he's crazy enough to shoot a fisheye a handsbreadth away from a spinning dirt bike. Regardless, the formation depicted seems better suited for close-up macrophotography. For something that (one presumes) you would want to keep just a bit of safety distance, why not mount the strobes outside the frame?
Shock value aside, this definitely runs afoul of the less gear, more brain mantra. Sheesh, if you want to shoot day for night, why not wait until the sun actually goes down?
One advantage over studio strobes: shoot high speed sync at 1/1000 or so and overpower the sun?
Hey Guys -
Thanks for all the love and for breaking my Econo hosting account at GoDaddy. Good to know that I'm now in the same class as Platon - as far as getting a website crashed by David.
Couple of things I want to share... and since I can't get to my website, I'll list them here.
1. At first having an army of speedlites seemed like a crazy idea (which is why I asked Canon for the gear). I've now come around to thinking that it's not so crazy if the alternative is a couple of Rangers with the high-speed (dual tube) head. I'm still working this through... but if you're in the market for $6k of field lighting gear a suitcase of Speedlites might be a worthy candidate. Twelve lights is definitely far more versatile than two. It's also a lost less weight to carry. You can't do high-speed sync with Rangers. With the Ranger bi-tube head, you can get an ultra-fast pop of action-freezing light. But that's not high-speed sync. You're still limited by the sync speed of your camera. If you're trying to kill the ambient in a dramatic way, a relatively slow shutter speed limits your aperture options. You'll have to wait until I get my bandwidth issues resolved to see the motocross shots... . When you do, you'll understand why I'm thinking that this is not such a crazy idea. Of course there's the lingering question of where a guy (like me) comes up with the dough to buy the gear. If Canon did not know where I live, I'd think about not sending it back ;) Just kidding Canon.
2. Fear not, I did not blind Ben Willmore. Nor did I trigger the onset of the apocalypse (love that line though!). In high-speed sync the strobes pulse at an ultra-fast rate so that there's "constant" illumination for the fraction of time that the sensor is exposed. To get an instantaneous recycle for multiple pops, the power to the lights is greatly reduced. Heck, my hair didn't even catch on fire when Ben took the shot that leads off his post about the shoot.
3. You guys could start doing "Gang Light" work as well. Most shooters I know have a Speedlite or two. At a Strobist meet-up, pull them all out and start flashing the moon together. Use the built-in wireless TTL and you don't have to have Poppers, Wizards and the like.
Maybe you guys are more into the gear but seeing the reflection(s) I'd say Photoshop.
nuff said
Interesting. What would happen with an SLR that has an electronic shutter? You wouldn't need high speed sync and would have more power from each flash. You would be able to get much of the same effect with fewer strobes - right?
you may be speechless, but the guy was probably blind for a few minutes after that! =)
Man...it's probably like looking into a supernova. I hope people are wearing welder's goggles when their picture is taken.
In before the cliche:
"Hey, isn't it easier to just get some high powered studio lights."
Oops. Nevermind. LOL!
I kid, I kid. But I don't think the point of bring up the uniqueness of using this many speed lights is to demonstrate how easier it is to use this many speed lights as opposed to using studio lights.
Awesome a $6K ringflash- that's thunkin'
@ DaveF -- Nice Trinity Site reference.
Everyone's making references to the cost of *owning* 12 speedlights. Assuming you live in even a modest metropolis, there's probably a camera store that will rent you a fist-full of speedlights.
Also, there is absolutely no reason why this would be a bad idea with manual flashes. The use of RPs and TTL flash metering is icing on the cake. Start with a pair of Pocket/Poverty Wizards, and use cheap optical slaves w/ a short extension cord to get the slaves in front of the flash array. I figure that's about $100~$110 per flash.
On an earlier post there was a video of Joe McNally shooting a model in the desert. He had a fairly elaborate set of flashes as well. Definitely having more flashes reduces the recyle time. Sometimes for events I use two flash set-up on a monopod that I saw from Ed Pingol.
Thanks for the post!
Arpad
A village in India has been blinded by this orgy of speed-lights. Apparently the resulting light from the shot reflected off a satellite arm in space and bombarded a village in central India during a annual festival of worshipping the Sun God. Most of them are convinced they were visited by His Holiness.
Insanity never looked so good, though I'd imagine that must be hard on the subject's eyes?
Perhaps some frosted vellum affixed to the frame would soften it up a bit.
before rushing to judgment, one should repeat this over and over again: "high-speed sync".
That's the key.
I'm looking forward to see the resulting shots. Gotta love the Strobist Effect.
For all who say "I'd just shoot at night" --
If you're not shooting for FREE, then you're creating an image to someone else's design. [David covered that brilliantly a couple of weeks ago.]
So, if your art director says she wants Author XYZ shot under moonlight for the cover of the NY Times Book Review and the only 3 minutes Author XYZ will give you are at high-noon because he's getting on his jet to Cabo right after lunch, what are you going to do?
If you want to be a pro and earn your nickles by creating images that meet the needs of others, you won't always have the luxury of shooting when you want to. Having a head full of techniques can be a jobsaver.
that must have been one hell of a sunburn! darron.
http://www.one-500th.com
The idea is definitely interesting... but the money it costs to put together this thing ( heads & poppers) why not get a real ringlight? Just an idea...
By the way, it's Friday, December 12, and still no announcement from Radio Poppers (as promised).
Wow.
Jack
Wow, it's utterly amazing that even after Andy gave you a clue and Syl explained why, about 95% of you just don't get it...
So, in addition to needing HSS and shooting on the clients timetable, have you ever tried to focus at night on a rapidly moving target??? And, what if you need to trigger more than one shot in a burst???
Pretty cool! Wish I had that kind of disposable income.
Equipment looks strange, but impressive
I have never seen actually like this. What exactly is the benefit of shooting it this way?
I actually do more-or-less the same thing for some work I do. I'm not ganging 12, but 7 still suits me nicely.
More portable, more versitile, more redundant, and HSS when compared to the 'stobe' alternative.
Plus, it just kind of happens... it's like "Hey, I've got 3 SB800's... (for 1 on a lightstand to your left, one to your right, and one on camera to pop them off) ... but the UI on the 900 is so much nicer... now you've got 4 flashes. Well, you need a redundant 'main' so you get another 900 ... then you find a deal on an 800 so that you can go 2 per 'side' on your stands... " etc etc... it slowly builds and next thing you know, you've got 3k in Nikon speedlights.
That's the experiments! Cumashedshy ))))))
Post a Comment
<< Home