My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

Innovatronix XT-3 review

Shooting on location is still one of the best things to do, however not everyone will have the budget to buy into 2 systems, one for the studio and one for on location. In our studio we use a mix of Elinchrom units in the studio and 2 Elinchrom Rangers and a Quadra for the location work, but I have to be honest it’s quite an investment of course, especially when you don’t shoot on location for your work (get paid) or if you just shoot on location a few times. In the past there have been some solutions to get your “studio” strobes working on location but I have to be honest that I never really was truly excited about them, well that has changed. Let me start with how this story evolved…..

 

I love to use smoke on location, to get the smoke working we always bring a Kipor gas generator which works very well, and it can even power your strobes (make sure you get a clear Sinus version because otherwise it will fry your strobes) but let’s be honest it’s noisy and especially in locations where there are houses close by and you shoot at night well let’s say that it’s better to have something silent, so I started researching a portable accupack to power my smoke machine. Very soon I ended up with the company Innovatronix, in the past I already used one of their battery powered packs and sold it when I switched to rangers, at that point it was an ok solution but it was not perfect (far from), the guys at Innovatronix were so kind to send me their XT-3 for a review to see if it worked on the smoke machines and to let me play with it, what follows is purely my opinion so don’t read it as an in depth look at the system, just my working experience with it.

 

xt3 230v50hz 300x300 schuko [a]5

 

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Manon with cameras

As you know I’ve been working on a series with models holding cameras.
Today some images in that series with our model Manon.

Manon October 5 2013 Eersel-19-Edit

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Manon at Studio76

Today some images we shot during the Studio76 workshops in Eersel last weekend.
This time it are images shot at day 2.

Manon October 5 2013 Eersel-33-Edit

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Just a bit of hairspray

Spicing a shoot up can be done in many different ways, add some smoke, water, flower but if you don’t have that available you can always opt for something that the model/MUA always has with them, hairspray.

 

I do have to add that the model will have some very sticky hair after this, don’t light a fire in the studio (especially close to her hair) and keep it away from the strobes. But if you take care (or in other words just use common sense) it can be a great addition to a shoot. Lighting it from the back will give you a little bit of extra pop to the spray.

 

In these shots I added a bit of Clarity from topaz (get it here http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html and use Doorhof99 for a cool 15% discount) to really make the image pop, something I think Clarity really is great for.

 

Model : Manon
Shot during the workshops in Eersel at Studio76

Manon October 5 2013 Eersel-53-Edit

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