Out of Focus

A shoot in the midlands earlier this week meant the opportunity to visit the annual Focus on Imaging show at the National Exhibition Centre.

Attention grabbing product launches were thin on the ground this year with Nikon being between major announcements and Canon's rather dramatic last minute withdrawal.  Plenty to see on the Lastolite stand though with their demonstrations and an excellent lighting tutorial on the neighbouring Westcott stand both making the visit and the £8.00 admission price car park charge worthwhile. Westcott products tend not to receive the attention they deserve in this country and Burgess Meredith was probably the last person to be genuinely excited by a new umbrella, but their ingenious folding designs and optical white covers on the shoot through models make them the umbrella of choice here. The umbrella does seem to be undergoing a resurgence at the moment, with giant sized alternatives to the big Elinchrom Octa on show.

Meanwhile, back at the Lastolite Batcave, their designers have been busy developing a huge number of new products at least one of which I can see being useful in my work on a regular basis. US photographer, Joe McNally's name has found it's way, literally, onto several new products including a development of the light panel which holds four SB900 (or equivalent) flashes on an extension arm. That's £1340 just for the flashes, if you're counting. Not far off the cost of a two head Elinchrom Ranger Quadra kit and not as powerful. Obviously, used individually, four SB900's may well be the more versatile solution, particularly if used together with the product which really caught my eye, the new Hotrod strip softboxes. I've long been a fan of the Ezybox Hotshoe for fast moving location portraiture where huge amounts of flash power is not always necessary.

This portrait of Jaronne for a magazine feature was made at the side of a busy London street using a single SB800 with an Ezybox Hotshoe . A fast way to work without drawing too much attention to a photo shoot.