Weekend Gear Test: Softlighter and Nikon CLS

This test has been overdue for a loooooong time.  I purchased a Photek Softlighter II back in August, and I have been looking to make a review of the product ever since. You see, I haven't really tested it on another person except for myself.  I thought of using on my recent shoot, but the bad weather didn't give me the chance.  So when my pal Daryl came over the weekend, we took it out, dusted it out (literally) and took it for a spin.

What came in the box? There's the 46" inch umbrella (removable backing), the white cover and, not in the picture, 2 disks (1 silver and 1 gold) that you put inside the umbrella to add more light (silver) and warm up your light (gold).

The umbrella construction is quite solid, and sports 10 spokes rather than the traditional 8.  The shaft is removable at the end, so you don't poke your models eye out. This means you your light can get  as close (and as soft) as possible.

The umbrella can be used 3 ways.  It can be a black reflective umbrella, a shoot through umbrella (with the black cover removed) and lastly a umbrella box (reflective umbrella with the white cover added upfront). 

The silver disk that came with it gives you a stop (+1) more of light as Photek claims, which is to compensate for the light it eats up when the light is bounce to the umbrella and when it goes through the white cover (which is why the light is soft).

Here's how it looks like from the front.  The flash in this case is a Nikon SB-800.  It is totally inside the Softlighter and is totally covered.  It would be difficult for the SB-800's power menu to be changed, as you need to take off half of the cover, so we just used CLS to trigger it and control the power from the camera (I used a D80 in the test).  The good news, the black back cover and the white in front lets the CLS signal in.  Yes, even the black backing lets the signal in. If you're just using the slave feature of the SB-800, it also let's that light in to trigger your flash. In my test, it triggered the flash from 15 feet away, but unfortunately, I didn't go beyond 15 feet, but I think you can go up to 30 feet and still trigger it (I was just using the pop-up flash of the camera, more on that later).  So I adjusted the power from the camera and clicked away.  The light is really soft, and being a "round" softbox (the "experts" say it's not an Octabox) the light is controlled compared to a shoot-through umbrella.  Here are the other shots for the day.

 

And the setup shot :

Here are other Photek Softlighter II Reviews (much, much reliable than myself)

Strobist Softlighter Review

DIYP Review

Not a CLS Review

I'm not a CLS expert (please ask Joe), but we kinda tested it anyway since we were using CLS that afternoon.  So, we found out that it worked even in a Softlighter and even from 15 feet away (or  possibly more) with just the pop-up flash (at pop-up flash "--" power setting), but we wanted to see how far we can go with just bare flash and the pop-up.  We tried at around a distance of 70-80 feet, with the pop-up power of the flash at Full, but no luck.

We moved a little closer at about 50-60ft with Full pop-up power and.....TADA!

This is very impressive, I should say.  I've been hearing from others who have tested it, but all of them have used another SB-XXX flash attached to the camera, adding more power to the signal.  I haven't seen any test with just the pop-up flash. This means you can use your CLS from 50ft away while maximizing your pop-up flash.  To see how far (and it is way, way farther as you might think) you can go while using a flash unit on-camera, check this out (he used a SB-900).

Also, we were using CLS and were also using the trick FP-mode thing which allows your shutterspeed to go as high as you can.  Too bad it's not available on my Nikon D70, but it is available on  Nikon D80 models and up (I think).  See more details here.