Review: Studio Lighting With Speedlights—New Light Modifiers from Gary Fong
Gary Fong is an accomplished pro photographer who also designs and markets a line of innovative light modifiers for hot shoe flashes. I tested the new Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible Pro Kit and was very impressed. Fong’s original Lightsphere product has been in my wedding/event kit for several years now and it has changed the way I work and the quality of my photographs. 
First, a little history of my life with with camera strobes.
Way back in film days, I had a stint as a stringer for the Associate Press, in between shooting PR photos for local agencies and businesses. My camera bag was stuffed with battered Nikons and couple of Vivitar hot-shoe flashes. For the longest time, these were the workhorses of press photographers because they were small, inexpensive, and very powerful for their size. Yet, they threw out a light that was harsh and directional. I was probably covering a governor’s announcement at the state house, or a press conference by a fire chief, when it struck me that I was the only one in the gaggle of shooters, who did not have a 3×5 inch index card attached to my strobe with a wad of rubber bands. There it was: a free device that bounced about half the light energy up to the ceiling, and half toward the subject. The result was an image with much softer, flattering, and natural looking light. Unfortunately, this “light modifier” didn’t stay fixed to the strobe when you jammed it into your photo-vest or camera bag, nor did it stand up to the jostling of the crowd of still photo and video journalists. It was
Lightsphere Collapsible in its compressed mode.
also pretty useless when the camera was held in portrait position.
The camera industry is like every other, and innovation is often spearheaded by small entrepreneurs and inventors. Nikon, Canon, and the pro strobe vendors Lumidyne, Norman, and Sunpak stood back while the pioneers improved upon the 3×5 cards. One vendor made reflectors that inflated like a small pool toy. These cast a soft light but tended to block the infra-red light transceiver on the front of your flash. The set up time could also be a nuisance. There were a number of reflectors that attached to the strobe with Velcro® and these were a great improvement over the studio-made reflectors I rigged up using cardboard, aluminum foil, and grey gaffers’ tape. However, the Velcro tended to stick to all the wrong stuff in the camera bag. Then as now, the flash had to come off the hot shoe to conquer red-eye, and allow for vertically-oriented shots.
PowerSnoot
The solutions included using a 3 foot long coiled “PC” cord and sometimes, an unwieldy flash bracket. While the brackets were essential equipment for wedding photographers, who generally worked with heavy medium format cameras, setting up and using the brackets was a nuisance for news and event
Using the Gary Fong Collapsible Lightsphere on hotshoe with Nikon SB-800 and another 800 on a lightstand with the PowerSnoot, triggered by Nikon's wireless system.
photography. Not much changed in the world of portable light modifiers for speedlights until Gary Fong rolled out his product.
One day, I was shooting a Bar-Mitzvah video in a Boston suburb and saw that the still shooter on the job was using what looked like a 1 quart, white, refrigerator storage container attached to his strobe. He said it was a Gary Fong Lightsphere and that it had totally changed the way he worked. Later that week I picked one up at a local pro camera dealer
Florist in her shop, using SB-800 with Lightsphere, handheld and tethered to the camera body with a coiled cable.
and used it on wedding shoots immediately. The core features and benefits of the original Lightsphere carry through to today’s new Collapsible model. Much like a the bare-bulb strobes that were popular during the hey-day of hefty power pack strobe lights, the Lightsphere throws soft, even, light nearly everywhere. Light bounces off walls and ceilings, softening skin
wrinkles, reducing under-eye shadows, and producing a pronounced window-light look for your shots. Perhaps best of all, when the top half of your speedlight is rotated 90 degrees, and the camera is held vertically, the strobe and reflector still point toward the ceiling! I have never gotten any red-eye from either position. Since then, I have used the Lightsphere for dozens of events, leaving my unwieldy flash bracket in the car along with the other emergency gear. My only complaint about first generation product was that it was really tough to fit into a camera bag, of any size. Enter, the new Lightsphere Collapsible.
Mr. Fong has redesigned the product so it easily compresses to about 1/3 of its fully-extended height—now easily fitting into a pocket or compartment of any of my camera bags. The Pro Kit also includes several other goodies. A translucent white Inverted Dome can be inserted into the top of the Lightsphere, reducing the amount of light that reaches the ceiling. An amber-tinted Dome will help you balance your strobe to existing tungsten bulbs in a room. A set of blue, green, amber, and red Gels will tint all the light coming off your strobe and can be used for light balancing or color effects.
Another modular piece called the ChromeDome, is a chrome coated reflector that also fits inside the Lightsphere. It gives you more directional control of the light source, shooting more photons forward and up, rather than backward, where they don’t do much good. My favorite new device in the kit is the PowerSnoot; not an accessory for the Lightsphere; but a chrome-covered snoot that lets you channel the speedlight’s power into a narrower beam. A grid attachment can optionally be snapped on to the front of the snoot to further limit the spray of light. I tested it as a hairlight on a shot of my daughter sewing in her room. If you’ve used snoots and grids on studio strobes, you’ll really appreciate the value of this new addition to the Gary Fong line. If you’re a newcomer to light modifiers, step right up!
At garyfong.com you’ll find many great real-world examples and helpful videos that will get you started using all his products. Amazingly high ISOs, low noise camera sensors, and better flash metering and triggering systems are making small light systems so much more desirable. The Gary Fong Lightsphere Collapsible — Pro Kit (retail $169.95) will extend the usability, range, and creative use of your hot-shoe speedlights and are highly recommended by this writer and photographer.
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Digital Wedding Forum
Gary’s stuff works and is well made. And Gary is a nice person. Read his book (not heavy lifting) – it’s good.
Ciao!