Shooting Techniques With Monolights

Shooting Techniques With Monolights

by William Lulow

I might have mentioned in an earlier post that I recently bought a set of Westcott monolights. I bought the 400 watt/second version for my main light and several 200 watt/second ones for my various accent and fill lights. And I recently photographed a couple of assignments with them. So this is kind of a report on the techniques involved with using them.

Monolights are much more convenient than the older, studio, electric current versions of strobes. The obvious advantage of the former is their portability. The obvious disadvantage is that they are battery powered and therefore their batteries need to be constantly monitored for power levels. This can usually be solved by buying extra batteries and keeping them charged, but it is still something that’s on your mind if your shoots tend to be longer and take up more than 400 or so clicks of the shutter.

Here is an early setup in the studio as I was testing them:

The beautiful thing is that there are no wires on the floor! Each light is self contained. It has the power pack and the flash tube in the same unit. The more powerful one (400 watt/seconds) I use as my main light (shown here bounced into my large umbrella):

One of the reasons I got the more powerful one here is that it is usually bounced into the large umbrella to render a large, soft main light. This defines the kind of light that I use for most of my portrait subjects. All of the lights can be adjusted using the flash trigger which sits on the camera:

As you can see on the trigger, there are several different groups you can use to assign to your extra lights and each group can be regulated separately from each other. You can adjust the various power levels all from the camera without having to go over to each light or to the power pack to do it.

In the studio, I like to shoot with the camera ISO at 100, and the shutter speed to 1/125th of a second to freeze any movement by the subject. I like to try to capture spontaneous moments even though the subjects are in a studio, portrait environment. My aperture is usually at f/11. (Although in my first tests, I have found that the total flash output of these lights is about one stop less than that at around f/9 or so. Still, it is enough of depth-of-field to render all parts of the subject in sharp focus.

This image has all the detail and sharpness of my usual images. Settings were: ISO 100, f/8 at 1/125th of a second. The setup for this shot was:

My makeshift studio here was the lobby of a law firm in Philadelphia. I have known about monolights for a long time but never saw the need to change my equipment until now. What I love about using these lights is that there are no wires to contend with and I don’t have to find a wall outlet for my power.

The portability of these lights is obviously carried to any location and I recently made this image on a street in New York City:

The smaller 200 watt/second version (Westcott FJ200) was used raw (no bounce or diffusion) to make this image. I first tried the umbrella but felt that the more intense, direct light was better. Exposure was ISO 200, f/9 @ 1/125th of a second with my Canon 135mm f/2 lens. The result would probably have been just as good with the light bounced into the umbrella because I wanted everything in the background to be very soft and basically not lit (this was made around 7:30PM on a NYC street). I could have even pushed the ISO to 400 with similar results. But I decided to do it this way for this shot. I will experiment some more with the settings. The light was about 5 feet from the subject here, but the camera was about 15 feet away. Since it is the lamp-to-subject distance that creates the exposure with flash, the camera can be anywhere as long as it is in within radio distance from the light source, because the light is triggered by a radio wave.

The thing one should realize about these lights is that they are not as powerful as my old “plug in” power packs and heads. So, adjustments in exposure and ISO settings need to be re-evaluated depending on your various lamp-to-subject distances and shooting style. This image was made with just one light bounced into an umbrella:

It is okay, but it really needed an extra light to separate the heads more from the background. It also draws attention to the fact that it is hard to make an outstanding image with just one light. These strobe units are certainly light enough to carry at least two of them for every location assignment. So I have a large case which will hold all of them and a portable one which holds just two of them. When I do a location event shoot, I carry two heads, one for the camera, two light stands, an umbrella and a bag for the cameras and lenses.