Strobes for 4x5 portraiture

[jnanian]

the speedtron pack and 2 lights would work well
2400 ws is a ton of light. soft boxes will dim the light a little bit, but still ...
if you have your heart set on the speedtrons,
get a third light head and tons of honeycomb grids so you can bleed off more light

i have worked with speedtrons in the past, nice lights, but i am partial to monoblock lights.
they are self contained units ... you need less light on 1 head, you just dial it down and the other light/s
stay the same.

have fun reading through the opinion pages!

john

[36cm2]

Posted wirelessly..

Yeah, I'm between the monolights and fresnels at this point. We'll see how it changes after some educational reading.

[Lee L]

Does anyone make a sturdy bar for converting one hot shoe into two? I've seen something offered for the Cosina "Voigtländer" cameras, but it doesn't look sturdy enough to support two hot-shoe flashes.

The C/V units supplied two cold shoes, no electronic connectivity for firing a hot shoe flash. They were made to support two smaller items, e.g. a finder and bubble level finder, a finder and C/V shoe mount meter, and would do OK with a small flash (e.g. Vivitar 125) with a thin vertical front face with PC cord. They won't work for flash units much wider than the shoe because of spacing. They are sturdy enough to hold two hot shoe flashes, but that's not the point.

Putting leverage on a standard camera hot shoe with a large bar and multiple flashes of any size or weight isn't something I'd do. After market flash brackets are made to cover that, and attach to the camera at the tripod socket.

Many of the monolights limit their current draw, or draw heavy current for times so short (small fractions of a second) that they won't trigger most 15 amp breakers or fuses even with a couple on the same circuit.

Lee

[Chazzy]

The C/V units supplied two cold shoes, no electronic connectivity for firing a hot shoe flash. They were made to support two smaller items, e.g. a finder and bubble level finder, a finder and C/V shoe mount meter, and would do OK with a small flash (e.g. Vivitar 125) with a thin vertical front face with PC cord. They won't work for flash units much wider than the shoe because of spacing. They are sturdy enough to hold two hot shoe flashes, but that's not the point.

Putting leverage on a standard camera hot shoe with a large bar and multiple flashes of any size or weight isn't something I'd do. After market flash brackets are made to cover that, and attach to the camera at the tripod socket.

Many of the monolights limit their current draw, or draw heavy current for times so short (small fractions of a second) that they won't trigger most 15 amp breakers or fuses even with a couple on the same circuit.

Lee

Actually, I wasn't planning on using two flashes in a hot shoe on a camera. I should have specified that I was talking about cold shoes—my mistake. I have some umbrella brackets which are made to tilt and which have a cold shoe fitting on the top. I think I also have the option of taking off the cold shoe and mounting to a brass 1/4x20 fitting. Is there a bar of metal with two cold shoes on it that would mount to one of my umbrella brackets, in case I want the power of two shoe-mount flashes? It sounds like the kind of thing that Manfrotto might make.

[Lee L]

Is there a bar of metal with two cold shoes on it that would mount to one of my umbrella brackets, in case I want the power of two shoe-mount flashes? It sounds like the kind of thing that Manfrotto might make.

Midwest Photo Exchange has a department for people using equipment in this way, named after the online 'strobist' page that you probably know about, and cooperating in providing solutions and products suggested on the strobist page. My first two clicks on the Midwest Photo strobist page got this: http://www.mpex.com/browse.cfm/4,12712.html
They have lots of other useful stuff in that department for people trying to get the most out of shoe mount flash units.

Lee