A single speedlite photoshoot setup

My Canon 430 ex II has never let me down so far – Aside from the amount of batteries it EATS! I’ve recently purchased a Gary Fong collapsible fashion & commercial lighting kit to go with my 430 ex II and thought I’d hit the streets of ‘rural’ (Not) Houten to give it a spin!

So here it is. Setups don’t get any more simple than this. One single speedlite with the Gary Fong collapsible on top of it. I’ve also used the blue gel that comes with the fashion and commercial kit to turn the sky red-ish and to balance my subject neutral.

Because the light source is only tiny the light hitting my subjects face is rather hard. Luckily the Gary Fong collapsible takes care of this a little. Still not as much as a softbox would but the collapsible is so small and convenient to carry around with you while you’re location-hunting – I really don’t mind brushing some harsh ugly shadows out. You win some, you lose some.

I’ve used a falcon eyes uber-light light stand for this shoot and I’ve put a € 2,00 optical slave cell hotshoe on top of it followed by my 430 ex II and Gary Fong collapsible lightsphere. I’ve used a set of Pocketwizard II to trigger the flash wirelessly.

Would you believe that this was taken about a minute before the purple/red-ish looking photos were taken? It was! This was taken without the blue gel that came with the Gary Fong Kit, the rest was taken with!

Here are the shots I came up with just one single speedlite: