A New Leader in the Off-Camera Flash market
I have a new favorite photo gear brand that I want to share with everyone, LumoPro.
In their own words "LumoPro is a brand of quality lighting and support equipment made by photographers, for photographers. We are devoted to exceptional photographic equipment and extraordinary customer service."
It's true, the bar has been set very high in the off-camera flash market. I have personally purchased several of their light modifiers and stands, and they are made with functionality and quality in mind. I was recently allowed to test drive one of their more recent flashes the Lumopro LP180 Quad-Sync Manual Flash. Now when I say "this baby is built like a tank", I mean it. Even without the four AA batteries, you can still tell just by holding the flash in your hand that this thing is made to last.
Originally released in 2013, this three year old flash boasts an impressive guide number of 110 @ 10ft x f/ll at ISO 100. There are four easy ways to sync this flash with your camera, standard hot shoe, 3.5mm (1/8”) miniphone port, PC port, and built-in optical slave.
Here I compare the LP180 to the workhorse Nikon SB-800.
Here are a few pics I shot in my home studio using the LumoPro 22" Beauty Dish with one Lumopro LP180 flash. You won't find a finer made beauty dish either, who needs the standard 17" when you can have Lumopro's 22" cylinder of goodness. This beauty dish is made for speedlights but can also be retrofitted for and monolights using bowen mounts. A separate bowen mount can be purchased for this purpose.
My one light setup.
The following pics were photographed with the included beauty dish soc and the separately purchased 20 degree grid. The LP180 is an all manual flash which means it can be triggered with any name brand or third party transceivers. For this demonstration I used the higher end Pocket Wizards and economically priced Cowboy Studio Poppers to trigger the flash.
Here are some finished photos from the shoot. One LP180 provides plenty of light for the 22" beauty dish. Of course as in all setups your flash to subject distance should be complementary for proper exposure.
I encourage everyone to check out the LumoPro website and take a gander at their light modifiers, stands, and flashes. LumoPro products can be purchased through authorized dealers geographically.
I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. Please feel free to leave comments and share this blog with your friends. In the future I plan to do more product reviews and lighting setups, so that we can all grow our knowledge of this photography medium that we all enjoy. Happy shooting.
Semper Fi