Studio Strobes Tutorial

Strobe lights are just like regular ones…..they’re just on for a much shorter length of time. Don’t let them intimidate you.

  Terms you need to know:

Power pack: The car-battery size box that sits on the floor and has several wires coming out of it.

PC cord: The small diameter wire plugs into the power pack and the other end is meant to be plugged into a camera (the little round plug is called a pc plug). It is one of the means of firing the strobe at the exact time the camera makes an exposure (the hard wire way).

Power cord: The single cord which comes out of the end of the power pack which plugs into a regular AC outlet.

Flash head power cords: The heavy duty looking black cords which plug into the top of the power pack and run to the flash heads.

Flash Heads: The objects which are located at the top of the light stands and are attached to the soft boxes or reflectors. Each flash head has a constantly running cooling fan and a constantly burning modeling light. The modeling light is a quartz halogen bulb and gets quite hot in operation. No combustible material should be placed close to the front of the flash head while it is in operation.

WARNING! The boom mounted flash head needs special attention. The boom is counterbalanced by a heavy weight. This whole stand is top heavy and can easily fall over. Be VERY careful when adjusting it and try to keep the head directly over one of the light stand legs.

Soft Boxes: The large box looking cloth objects which are attached to the tops of the light stands. They act to soften the effect of the light that is projected from the flash heads. The light that comes from them provides a much more pleasant look to human skin and some other objects. Use of them is pretty much by trial and error. The soft boxes are attached to the flash heads by three thumb screws accessed at the flash head. They are easily removed, but one needs to be careful when removing because the mounting ring can catch on the light and cause the reflector/modeling light to pull out of its socket.

Controls: (we need to put in an illustration of the power pack here) All but one of the light controls are located on the power pack. The only exception is a small rocker switch located on the back of each flash head. That switch allows the operator to turn off the modeling light to that head (but the cooling fan continues to run).

Main Power Switch: Lower left corner. This lights up when the unit is on.

Ready Light: Located just above the synch switch. Lights up when flash is ready to use. It will go out momentarily while flash recharges after an exposure. Pressing this light can be used to make a test flash.

Power Control Switches: Two switches that provide seven basic power settings or levels of flash brightness. Usually, these need to be left in the lowest, or green setting. The LED with each switch changes color as one changes the switch. The other two brightness levels are indicated by orange and red LED colors. Red is the brightest or most powerful.

Proportional Modeling Light Controls: These dual slide switches are located next to the Power Control Switches. They are used to set the brightness of the constant-burning modeling lamps and allow them to be set to match (visually) the intensity of the flash brightness or power level. Note: This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will get exactly what you see if you match the slider color to the LED color. If two heads are plugged into one side, the power output of each head is 50% of what would be the output of the other side if it only had one strobe head attached and was set at the same power level. These sliders also have one position which can be used to turn off the modeling lamps without turning off the cooling fans.

Variator: Just above main power switch. Allows variation in overall power for fine exposure adjustment…if you want to get to a particular f-stop. It provides 1/3 stop adjustments.

Ratio/Combined Switch: Located just to the right of the handle directly across from the Variator. Unless you are REAL interested in the intricacies of this system, just leave the switch in the A:B position, which means “With one head plugged into one channel and two in the other, the power delivered to the single head will be the amount selected on that channel’s Power Output Switch. The power delivered to each of the two heads plugged into the other channel will be half the amount of the setting for that channel (power setting of that channel divided by the number of heads plugged into the channel).” If the switch is moved into the A+B position, a red LED will light up.

Slave Switch: Built in slave eye can be triggered by separate flash or two channels of infrared. Provides a choice of four different flash synchronization modes, radio control, or conventional synch (pc) cord.

Circuit Breakers: Located near the base of the unit on the flash head plug end. Once in a while something inside the unit will cause it to shut down. When that happens, usually looking at the circuit breakers will show that one or both have popped out. Simply push the button back in. If it continues to shut down, there probably is a serious problem and the unit should not be used.

  So, what f-stop/shutter speed combination shall we use?

With a digital camera, one can always sort of do a trial and error system….checking the LCD screen on the camera to see if the image looks decent. The problem here is that it is difficult to really see how good the image is on one of those little screens. For those who are a little more discriminating in their work, a flash meter can be used. Interested? If so, check out the tutorial on flash meter use.

Last but certainly not least: Take care of the equipment. Don’t drop it, don’t force it. When you’re done with it turn it off, put it away neatly so that the next user will not be forced to deal with your mess. If something is not working properly, make sure you tell your supervisor and put a note on the equipment so someone else won’t be caught unaware.