Strobist Equipment

From my own experience, when trying to get hold of the gear you want for a photographer’s lightweight Strobist kit, living in the UK doesn’t make things that easy. So, to help you on your way in getting the most out of your camera and strobes / flashes, below are some companies which can supply some of the essential components for your Strobist system.  If you want to cut straight to the chase, here are quick links to the exact items I’m using on the Jacobs site (I’ve now spent more at Jacobs than anywhere else (all my pro-level lenses and body have come from there), and have been happy with their service!)  For info, the original places I had to dig out some of this equipment from are listed below the links.

• Manfrotto 001B Nano lighting stand
• Manfrotto MN026 umbrella mount
• Nikon AS19 stand (for mounting my SB-800s to the umbrella mounts, and the corresponding stand for the SB-900).  You could also use something like the ones below (note, I don’t have any of these next adapters, as the Nikon stands serve all my needs for my speedlights – SB-800/SB-900)…
• HAMA Tripod Hotshoe Adapter – this will work for you if you are using a flash which isn’t going to be sync’ing via its hotshoe.  If you need one with a sync port built in (e.g. if you are using PocketWizards with an SB-600), then there are plenty of alternative options, like this one…
• Interfit Hotshoe to Lightstand Adapter – which is not as well built as the HAMA adapter, but does have a sync port.  There are also plenty of dirt cheap alternative knocking around on eBay.
• Manfrotto Spring Clamp and Hotshoe (AKA The Justin Clamp) – I have two of these and use them a lot.  They’re great if you need to travel extra light, and can’t take a stand, and also for fixing a speedlight in places where a stand just wouldn’t work. Note that if decide to shop around for one of these, make sure you get the one with the hotshoe built in, and not the standalone clamp, otherwise you’ll still need to buy some extra bits and pieces yourself to allow your speedlight to be mounted.

And my original sourcing…

• For the lightweight Manfrotto 001B Nano lighting stand, umbreIIa mount and hot-shoe adapter, all these are available as a kit (or separately if you so wish) from The Flash Centre. If you live in London, they have a store near Russell Square which is well worth a visit. [See below for an update on the Flash Centre Starter Kit.]
• For the collapsible Westcott umbreIIas, you have three choices (white shoot-through, silver reflective, or white with a black cover for use either way) available from Creative Video. The customer service I have had with these guys has been exceptional. Shipping though is quite expensive, and it’s worth noting that these are now available from The Flash Centre.
• For ball bungees and strobe filters (both colour correction and for effects in your photographs), I use FlashGels.
• For budget wireless triggers (Cactus V2s), go to Gadget-Infinity on eBay and search for “trigger”. Although shipped from the far east, postage charges are very reasonable, the shipment never seems to attract any VAT or duty at customs, and normally comes through in 4 to 5 working days. Once you get them, you can make some relatively simple changes to get the reliability of the transmission up to near enough 100%, and increase the range by an order of magnitude. You simply need to cut a small hole in the case, and fix a 44 Mhz stubby aerial, wired with shielded wire to the antenna point on the circuit board, and the shielding on the wire you’ve used fixed to the -ve of the battery terminal. You can read more about my modification on this page. Note that I rarely use these though, as the reliability does get on my nreves. The modification vastly improves it, but it still is far from perfect. I usually (dependent on conditions) run with either Nikon CLS, or PocketWizards, but this choice will obviously be dictated by your budget.

Once assembled, the above kit looks like the following (this is my kit, excluding the triggers) – a very portable package:

I have used all of these suppliers myself, and found their service to be excellent (unless otherwise specified). Note that I don’t get anything myself from you choosing to purchase from these guys – my recommendation is simply based on the experience I had with them all. Additionally, most of the above (apart form the eBay triggers) are UK based, so no complications with import duty or VAT.

Another useful tool (or rather reference work), is the classic book “Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting“, which contains a ton of first principles information on lighting a whole range of different subjects. I can highly recommend this as a source of solid lighting theory to back up the Strobist approach.

An alternative vendor for the lighting stand (and other equipment) is Teamwork Photo & Digital, although I haven’t tried these chaps myself yet, so I can’t vouch for their service. However, Rams, who runs the London Strobist Meetup group on Flickr, has let me know that he bought his stands, clamps and spigots form them a couple of years ago, and had excellent service.

A UK company I would not recommend is Fotosense. I have tried to use this company twice now, and on each occasion, they have caused me frustration, and provided generally poor service & poor response to complaints. I recommend you steer clear to avoid frustration!

Note on Flash Centre Starter Kit

We’ve had an interesting comment from Scott posted below, regarding the small flash starter kit from The Flash Centre, and the problems he has with it. When I first wrote this article, the starter kit that they provided came with a Manfrotto umbrella mount, which has given me sterling service. However, it now sounds like they have changed to a Lastolite mount which has issues as reported by Scott. Considering that, it may be worth buying the parts separately, namely, the Manfrotto stand, Manfrotto umbrella mount, etc, etc, to ensure that you get the exact items you want. Thanks for the comment, Scott.

A Final Thought

One last thing to think about – you are inevitably going to buy a whole range of bits and pieces to make your lighting kit work exactly how you want it to, and it’s tough to make an exact recommendation unless the specifics of what you’re looking for, or your existing kit, are known.  I may put another post together at some point which provides a number of options for a complete starter kit, but for now, the info above should give some good starting pointers.  Any specific questions, feel free to contact me.

Finally, if you have found the above information useful, and it’s saved you some money on import duty and VAT, please feel free to make a donation through Paypal to me to keep this site alive by clicking on the button below – it will make me smile too

If you liked this post, you may also like:

Strobist Boot Camp II – Assignment 1
Cactus V2s Modification
Strobist Boot Camp II – Assignment 2
Strobist Flag Raising on Iwo Jima
The Youngest Strobist?

Tags: Equipment, flash, gear, lighting, photography, strobism, Strobist

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Equipment, Strobist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.