Godox has announced a pair of new dive light series, each with three different models. The series are differentiated by their color temperatures, with the WTD models offering daylight color temperature (5,600 Kelvin (K), +/- 300K) and the WTR lights allowing users to adjust the color temperature from 1,800K to 10,000K.
Loop lighting is a very common style of portrait lighting that is seen very often in portrait photography. In fact, if you’ve spent much time at all shooting in a studio, you’ve probably employed loop lighting without specifically trying to.
Zhiyun has announced a pair of new chip-on-board (COB) LED lights, the G60 and X100. The new lights are very compact and kickstart a new product line for Zhiyun called the Molus series. The Molus series of lights join Zhiyun's previous products, including gimbals and pocket lights.
The Sirui Dragon Series B25R bendable RGB LED light first announced a few months ago is now officially available to order. The $199 500 Lux LED light can be bent inwards or outwards to provide a wrap-around light, giving creatives the flexibility (pun intended) to properly and easily light their subjects in practically any space.
Aputure has announced various new lighting products, including its first RGBWW full-color LED pixel bar, a four-foot battery-powered pixel tube, a smaller portable one-foot battery-powered pixel tube, and an improved 200-watt (W) bi-color Bowens Mount point-source light.
Godox has announced the KNOWLED lineup of RGBWW Pixel Tube LED lights that will be available in three sizes.
Sirui has announced the A100B Bi-Color Automatic Inflatable Photography Light, a distinctly odd yet interesting constant light source that includes self-inflation, an integrated diffuser, impressive color accuracy, and various lighting effects.
Westcott has announced FlexiGels, a new custom-made silicone color gel accessory for its FJ400 strobes.
Zhiyun's FiveRay F100 LED light sticks have a solid level of power, are easy to maneuver, are affordable, and can perform a wide variety of lighting tasks. They're great lights, marred mainly by frustrating controls.
Nikon Japan has announced that it will discontinue the production of the SB-500 Speedlite and is also temporarily suspending new orders for the SB-5000 Speedlite due to difficulty sourcing parts.
While there are a multitude of lightweight portable strobes, few are powerful enough to compete with the sun or have enough juice to double as a studio strobe. Those are exactly the problems Elinchrom looked to address with its FIVE system.
SmallRig seems to have taken the reviews of the previous generation of its COB lighting to heart and made some significant improvements to both the design and performance of the new RC 450D (Daylight) and 450B (BiColor) COB LED lights.
Butterfly lighting has long been a “go-to” setup for fashion close-ups as well as other portraits where one wants to emphasize cheekbones and frame the face in shadows from below the chin.
LEDs have changed a lot about how studio photography works, and Hobolite believes its lights can be equally accessible to both amateurs and professionals alike.
Nanlite's six new Forza LED spotlights and two PavoTube LED tube lights feature changes that significantly improve them.
Paul C. Buff has announced a new 500Ws compact and lightweight battery strobe called the Celestial, which features a bright LED modeling light, a built-in wireless receiver, and support for high-speed sync (HSS) and TTL shooting.
If you’re looking to make your photography stand out it’s time to get creative with light. The longer I’ve been a photographer, the more I’ve come to appreciate good light. Good light makes my job so much easier, but interesting light makes my job more creative.
SmallRig has been aggressively pushing into the video lighting market with its series of LED RC lights and shows no signs of slowing down with its RC 350 and RC 450 COB LEDs.
Photographers who shoot portraits are likely familiar with Rembrandt-style lighting as well as other styles such as loop, butterfly, and so on. This is especially true if you have taken a lighting class or have been reading up on the subject. You may be using this specific type of portrait lighting in previous images and might not even realize it until reviewing later. (Ask me how I know).
Zhiyun has announced a pair of new LED lighting tools that are designed to bring studio-quality light in a compact package. The M40 is a pocket-sized LED panel while the F100 is described as a handheld "light stick."
Elinchrom has announced the Elinchrom FIVE, a new 522Ws active-charging, battery-powered, portable, off-camera monolight that lets users work equally well in the studio or on location.
Canon has announced the new Speedlite EL-5, a powerful and portable flash unit for advanced photographers that's the company's first flash designed for the Multi-Function Shoe found in the latest EOS R mirrorless cameras.
British LED lighting manufacturer Rotolight has announced a new Indiegogo campaign for Pro Editions of its most successful photo and video LED lights - the NEO 3 and AEOS 2.
Most photographers don’t have an unlimited pool of money or a vast unending studio to collect and hoard gear in. For this reason, it’s especially important to choose gear and accessories that allow them to get the most bang for their buck, like a simple large white backdrop.
V-Flat World has launched a new series of 360-degree diffusion Light Cones for product photography in partnership with Karl Taylor. This new set of lighting modifiers may look like a dog cone of shame, but demonstrations show they work remarkably well to eliminate reflections.
Westcott has announced the new L60-B 60W Bi-Color COB LED, an "ultra-portable" 60-wat bi-color light designed for video and photo content creators.
Aputure has announced the $199 MT Pro Pixel RGBWW Mini Tube light, what it calls the first-ever one-foot-long full-color mini LED tube.
Let’s talk about wedding photography flash and what you need to know. Shooting with flash can be intimidating if you’re just starting out but it can be freeing the more you know how to use it. There might be times when you need to use flash and there might be times when you choose to use flash.
Westcott recently released its third version of the popular specialist tool, the Eyelighter. If you happen to be a working headshot or portrait photographer, there is no way you haven’t seen it, thought about buying it, or even had it in your shopping cart at some point.
I’ve used poly-boards, bounce-boards, and even white sheets and white walls as lighting modifiers to soften the light in the past, but arguably the quickest and most efficient way to instantly achieve beautifully soft light, is the V-Flat.
Godox has announced the Lux Junior on-camera flash, a $69 retro-inspired strobe for Fujifilm, Canon, Nikon, OM-Digital (Olympus), and Sony cameras.
Profoto has announced the A2 monolight off-camera flash that is about the size of a 12-ounce can of soda. The small and portable strobe is billed as ideal for supporting location shoots like weddings, awards ceremonies, or other events.
Nanlite has introduced a new bi-color LED spotlight called the Forza 150B. It offers flexible color temperature adjustments in a compact form factor and precise fan control to keep the light cool and quiet during all-day shoots.
There can be a lot of gear-envy among photographers when they see others with tons of expensive camera gear, lighting equipment, and modifiers. It is also all too easy to say that you can’t be creative because you don’t have access to a particular light or piece of equipment.
Profoto has announced the Connect Pro, its latest generation trigger that is capable of controlling 100 channels that each host six groups: three for TTL and three for manual control.
The use of strong and complementary colors is an ever-growing trend in photography. Many modern advertising campaigns feature bold and contrasting colors in order to draw your focus to the product or message they are trying to sell. One way to create such vibrant color in your own images is by using colored gels (also known as color filters, filter gels, lighting gels, or simply gels).
SmallRig's 220 Watt RC 220B LED light is a much-anticipated update to the RC120 series LED. While the D version is daylight balanced, the B model we tested offers a color balance of 2700K to 6500K. After making several smaller vlogger-style LED lights, it seems with this update, SmallRig is officially entering the professional continuous lighting world.
Portrait photographers use a myriad of different lights and lighting styles to achieve the results they desire. I’ve seen great portraits done with 10 lights, and even greater portraits done with a single light. The best photographers can do both and play around with lights like tools in their toolbox to create something unique.
Rotolight has announced a set of new parabolic softbox umbrellas for the AEOS, NEO, or any other similarly sized LED with the promise of its ability to produce high-quality soft light.
Rotolight has announced what it says is the world's first electronic "SmartSoft Box" for its AEOS 2.
Though it can fit in the palm of the hand and is extremely light, the Nanlite Forza 60C has a huge amount of power. This Chip on Board (COB) LED light packs a powerful array of LEDs that can illuminate a subject with up to 12,810 lux at one meter.
Litepanels has announced the new Gemini 2x1 Hard LED light panel. It offers the brightest focused beam available in its class and can illuminate a subject with up to 20,000 LUX of light at three meters but is still lightweight enough to mount to a drone.
If you’ve decided to take the next step in your photographic lighting and purchase some studio strobes, then you will need to ask some questions about what kind of images you’ll be creating in the studio and what the best lighting for those particular subjects is.
Fill light is one of the unsung heroes in the photographic industry, yet the fill light in basic three-point lighting can be just as important as the key. Getting it right can make your images look much better.
Black holes. They’re an astronomical phenomenon that sucks in all available light with no escape. So what if you could create a photo backdrop that could mimic that kind of light absorption without reflecting? A photographer recently used an ultra-black fabric to make the darkest photo backdrop in the world.
In the two-plus decades I’ve been a photographer, finding the right light modifiers for the varied work that I did was a challenge. In the small community I lived in, my subject matter ranged from commercial photography to weddings and portraits. Each subject required its own type of lighting.
Aputure has announced the LS 600c Pro which aims to push the film industry cheaper without sacrificing quality by comparing it to current RGB industry standards.
Small Rig has taken the successful point-source LED design of the RC120 and amped it up to create a new light that is even brighter without sacrificing its lightweight and compact design.
What are the most important features you look for when buying a flash? Many photographers consider the amount of power a unit has to be the most important, but there are a few other specifications that are just as important, including flash duration. In this article, I will break down exactly what flash duration is and how it works.
One of the biggest challenges for a photographer learning how to light with an off-camera flash isn't necessarily the type of lights they have but rather learning how to control it.
