The Biggest Box

I had a portrait coming into the studio on Saturday morning and my Friday night was free - so I decided to set up and take some test shots. I had just been covering an event where a portrait photographer was using a light modifier that I hadn't used before but remembered seeing somewhere in the studio. Before I ever found that I found gear bags with two other very cool things - one was a massive 6 foot soft box. I didn't know we had one that big. Next I found a strip box that was 8 feet long! I forgot about what I was originally looking for and started to put these together.

The large soft box needed a bit of work as the poles were slipping through holes that must have been from wear. I used some gaffers tape as a temporary fix.

I used the 4 foot soft box with a grid(that is on a boom stand) for my key light to the right - I used the massive soft box for some beautiful fill on the left. This thing will be great for full length shots too. Or as Rick(my landlord/retired pro/friend) told me - on location to block out the sun!

Crash didn't want to be left out of the Friday night photo party.

Next I set up the strip light. It took some doing and another text to Rick to make sure I wasn't breaking it. He assured me it took the same speed ring and just a fair bit of pressure.

So this is the same set up as the first two shots but adding the strip for some rim light/highlights. Very cool - again it will be awesome to be able to use it for bigger things - like my bicycles!

The view from where I'm standing.

I shot this with my 6D and a super-wide angle lens to get everything in the photo.

This last shot is the same set up but I used my "nifty-fifty". The nifty-fifty is a plastic Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens that only costs about $100. It is amazing how sharp it is for that price. Its main weakness(besides the build quality) is when you try to get a nice smooth background - say outdoors. It doesn't have that great "bokeh" that expensive lenses do.
Anyways - I'm excited to use these new tools for some other creative shots in the near future - oh yeah - and I'm going to go back and dig out that other modifier soon.