Lighting News

Shutterbug, a member of the Technical Image Press Association (TIPA), once again joined forces with 30 other member magazines from around the world to choose the winners of the annual TIPA Awards for the best photo/imaging products in 40 different categories. The award process began in early 2017 with an initial selection of a wide range of products conducted by TIPA’s Technical Committee, on which Shutterbug’s Editor-at-Large George Schaub serves. 

If Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate were graduating from photo school this year, the advice he would be getting instead of “plastics” would be “speedlights,” and why not? When compared to a monolight, the biggest advantage of using a shoe-mount flash is that they’re small and portable, which means you can take them anywhere. Today’s shoe-mount flashes—or speedlights as camera manufacturers like to call them—are sophisticated, seamlessly blending natural light and flash as well as having the ability to group several flashes together, trip them wirelessly, all the while calculating the correct exposure.

Fresnel lenses are used to focus light. Many of the Hollywood glamour photographers of the 1930s and ’40s used them, most notably George Hurrell for his portraits of many of the screen legends of that era. Hurrell used 8x10 cameras, uncoated lenses, and bulky Mole-Richardson hot lights. You don’t have to go that route, but you can now replicate some of the lighting effects with this new offering from Photogenic.

Our show report this year is an amalgam of product news and trend spotting, which pretty much reflects what photokina has stood for in our minds. The sense of a United Nations of photography still prevails at this increasingly European-directed show, but the image and its uses is still the universal tie that binds.

Roger Hicks’s “Pro Lighting Report” is part of our continuing series of reports from the photokina show. With a giant hall filled with lighting products, Roger reports here on what caught his eye and what he saw as the key trends at the show. We will continue with new lighting product reports in coming issues, with a special report coming out of the WPPI show held in March, and will catch up on more new products not mentioned here then. We consider lighting a key issue for all photographers and will have more tests ahead throughout the year.—Editor

Designed with many of the same features that made the original Odin so popular, the Phottix Odin II TTL UI and control system are now faster and easier to use. This updated model offers a 2.5 GHz frequency (with a range of 100m), 32 channels (with a digital ID code), 5 groups (A, B, C, D, E), group buttons and a convenient control dial for fast power changes, a manual power control (1/1 to 1/256), a flash zoom control, high speed sync (up to 1/8000s), an AF assist beam, a modeling light control (Indra500 only), second curtain sync and a TTL power control +/- 3EV.