Lighting News

I love testing the new and latest lighting gear. The transformation from the analog to the digital age has meant rapid advancements in both camera and lighting equipment. The advent of the self-contained, battery-powered monolight is one of the prime areas where the manufacturers are all producing lights that are just as capable and easy to use in the field as they are in the studio.

Olympus has unveiled the versatile weatherproof, freezeproof and dustproof Twin Flash STF-8 that will let you keep shooting macro shots in the rain when other photographers run for cover. The sophisticated unit offers full TTL capability as well as auto-sync and the ability to manually select the output power from full all the way down to 1/128.

For decades, soft light has been the bee’s knees for portrait photography. It’s flattering, pleasant to look at, and undistracting.

PocketWizard has just made their FlexTT5 TTL radio remote system available to users of Panasonic’s mirrorless cameras. When used with the Panasonic DMW-FL360L and DMW-FL580L flash units, the FlexTT5 TTL enables a full range of flash sync speeds up to 1/8000. 

When Cactus introduced its V6 wireless flash transceiver it created a lot of buzz because of an affordable price and it’s cross-brand compatibility. The company's newest model, the V6 II, offers all that and more; specifically, high-speed synchronization and compatibility with Fujifilm cameras (and the original five brands).

Reuben Wu is an artist with the fascinating vision of creating otherworldly landscape photographs that evoke both science fiction and 19th century Romantic paintings. He does this by selectively light-painting his scenes with a powerful done-mounted light.

Phew, what a busy month it’s been for new photo gear! While the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has not, traditionally, been a major event to debut high-end photography equipment, CES 2016 was definitely an exception with dozens of interesting imaging releases. (And hopefully this is a trend that continues at future CES events, which, in recent years have been rather ho-hum for photography gear.)