StrobePack: Wearable Portrait Studio and Cutting-Edge Fashion Statement
You can spot-meter and bounce strobes all you want, but on-location portrait photography can still be a pain the butt. Unless you take your studio lighting rig with you.
Mark Kaplan has devised a novel way to do just that with the StrobePack, a professional-level lighting setup rigged to be worn on the photographer’s back.
“The basic goal of the StrobePack, is to provide high-quality lighting at night and in low-light conditions,” he writes. “Although it can be used in daylight, it really works best with low ambient light. It allows low-ISO, long-exposure, higher aperture shooting, which results in sharp, clean subjects while still soaking in ambient light sources.”
Kaplan has gone through a number of permutations over the past two years to arrive at the current setup:
- Two Nikon SB-600 flashes,
- A Phottix Odin trigger system
- 24-inch white diffusers (can be replaced with softboxes)
- A Cowboy Studio T-bracket for mounting.
- Paul C. Buff Vagabond Mini battery pack.
- LED strip lighting and a portable PA system to turn the rig into a “DiscoPack” for Burning Man and other party assignments.
The combination delivers soft, event lighting, reasonable portability and plenty of shooting time. Apparent bonus: Quite the babe magnet.
You can find more photographs captured of and with the StrobePack over in this Flickr set.
Image credits: All images by Mark Kaplan/Naked Lens Photography, used by permission
