The Cordless Studio

Wouldn’t be great if you could cut out all of the cords in your studio and work untethered to anything? No power cords, with the freedom to put your lights wherever you want. And not have to worry about where to plug them in, or if you have a cord running across the set, or if the toddler you’re photographing is going to trip over or even chew on a power cord. Wouldn’t that be nice? This episode I share my journey into cordless and discuss the pros and cons of the Cordless Studio.

In Godox and MoLight news, learn more about the new Godox FL150 fabric-based LED that was a smash hit at the SYNC conference. And the new 500 watt high-powered Golden Eagle LED5000. Both of these new unit have battery and AC power options.  

Please like and follow the podcast Facebook page and join my Facebook group.

Transcript

female announcer: 0:03

Live from MoLight Studios in the heartland of America, it's your Monday morning jolt of hot photography tips with a frothy topping of the latest product news from Godox MoLight. And more. Welcome to the Monday morning cup of Mo with your host, the man who put the MO in MoLight Michael Mowbray.

Michael Mowbray: 0:26

Good morning and welcome to the Monday morning cup of Mo. I'm your host, Michael Mowbray. Each week, I pour a cup of coffee and I explore a single topic related to professional photography. So thank you very much for joining me today. And today I'm talking about the cordless studio, the unicorn, the mythical beast. Wouldn't it be great if you could cut out all of the cords in your studio and work on tethered to shoot anything? No power cords, the freedom to put your lights wherever you want, and not have to worry about where to plug them in. Or if you have a cord running across the set or if the toddler you're photographing is going to trip over or maybe even chew on a power cord. Wouldn't that be nice? Well, I thought So way back in 2009. That was a long time ago. Now I think about it. Every year since I started my studio, I'd like to give myself a major challenge for improving my skills. Back in 2009, the majority of the work I was doing was a mix of weddings and high school seniors and headshots. And much of that work was on location using speed lights as my main lighting source, both on and off camera. Right about the same time, a company called Radio poppers had introduced some new products that gave photographers the ability to control remotely and trigger remotely speedlights off camera. What was crazy back then, yes, we could finally change the power from transmitter that was velcroed on top of the camera flash. You know, nowadays we take that for granted. But back then there weren't, weren't any ways to do that. It was kind of a Frankenstein solution. But it worked fairly well when it worked. But it worked for the most part. The important thing was now gave me the ability to use multiple speed lights off camera and have more precision with the lighting control. I didn't have to run over to the light stand and turn the power up and down. I could do that from camera position. And this spawned an idea for me. What if I could use speed lights in the studio, I was already using them for all of my outdoor and location work. Wouldn't simplify things if I could just use them. For me, I don't know everything. I knew I was onto something. And I had a new mission, figuring out a way to couple my speed lights with my studio softboxes. So I did some research, I sourced some new speed rings, that low MacGyvering on a few and voila, I created a studio lighting setup using speed lights. My first big test was photographing my senior model team in the spring of 2009. And it failed horribly. Now I'm just kidding. It went really, really well. In fact, it went so well that I packed up my studio lights and started using only speed lights for pretty much everything. Now remember, this was long before Godox was around. So I was using Canon five ADX twos with external battery packs, and lots and lots and lots of rechargeable and ULoop batteries, I gang two or even four of them together in order to get more power, especially if I was working outside. So were there some downsides? Well, of course, I didn't have a modeling light. But in reality that really wasn't an issue for me. I knew where to place my lights to get the looks. I wanted to been doing this for a while. And with digital I had instant feedback and could tweak after the first shot. But what about an issue with larger pupils because I don't have a modeling light. While I saw that by keeping the ambient light brighter in my studio, which actually LED to an unanticipated benefit. It created a more pleasant environment for my clients. They weren't forced to sit in the dark and get flashed by a strong light, which has always been weird. That could be in a more normally lit room where the flash wasn't as intrusive. I just made sure that the ambient light wasn't intruding on my exposure. Or since I have a huge bay of south facing windows in my camera room. Sometimes I would allow the ambient light to blend with the flash. Because I had to shoot the speed lights at a relatively high power it forced me to slow down a little bit and be a little bit more deliberate, which was also a good thing. The overall benefit was that I was able to free up my creativity by focusing on a single form factor for all of my lighting. And by mastering that single form factor speed lights, I was able to free up mindspace and that allowed me to be more creative. I knew what my speed lights could give me in any lighting situation. And that helps my creativity to soar and my overall work to improve tremendously and to form the basis for where I am today. So you can imagine how giddy I was when I discovered Godox. Eight years ago, the original Godox v 850. Manual Speedlite had a rechargeable lithium ion battery. Wait a minute, I didn't have to charge four double A batteries for each flash, plus another eight double A batteries for an external battery pack. I could charge one lithium ion battery and get the same results. What kind of magic was this? Then Godox came out with the ad 360 that had the power of four speed lights in one unit. I fully committed to Godox at that point and have never looked back. I committed so hard that I now own the top rated Godox reseller in the US cool storia. The current Godox lineup makes it so easy to go entirely cordless from Speedlites. for macro photography all the way up to 1200 watt seconds at 1200 Pro. There's a complete range of battery powered flashes that really do fit every need. For example, I did a recent fashion shoot with the ad 1200 Pro and my new XL 150 Focusing deep parabolic softbox will not really soft boxes and deep parabolic so nevermind and never missed a frame despite firing quickly throughout the entire session never missed a frame shooting a fashion shoot. It was awesome. And I had a modeling light as well. On a battery powered flash. I'm also beginning to work cordless Lee with LEDs as both Godox and Golden Eagle have some great new options for powerful battery powered LEDs, including the brand new Golden Eagle LED 5000. It's a 500 watt cob style LED that works on either V mount batteries, or via an AC cord if you so choose to use that. So is it time for you to go cordless? Well, only you can answer that. But the great news is that there's a solution out there to fit no matter what you shoot. Here's the latest news from Godox and MoLight. I mentioned just a moment ago that the new Golden Eagle LED 5000 has arrived at MoLight at 500 Watts it is more than twice the power of their popular LED 2000 And it can be powered by V mount batteries, making it a great option for location for videographers and photographers alike. I also have an order of 300 Watt hour V mount batteries arriving soon as these will pair very nicely with the new LED. Matter of fact, I thought I'd have them by now. But you know with the whole international shipping thing things are delayed blah, blah, blah. It's gonna be a couple more weeks, but I'll have them soon. Giving on the battery powered theme that we've had today. The awesome new fabric based f l 150. LEDs from Godox are now in stock. This revolutionary LED is built into a flexible fabric that can be rolled up and stored in a small carrying case. To set up just unroll the fabric attached to a collapsible X frame and pop on a battery or plugin and you've got 150 watts of extremely portable LED power. I debuted these at the recent synth conference in Florida and people were floored by them. I'm sure that the limited stock I have on hand will be sold out soon. So if you're interested in the FL 150 Get your order in right away. And of course I'll be restocking as soon as I can. But you never know how long it's gonna take to get them back in MoLight is also carrying the 150 R which is a 30 by 120 striplight and the 150 s which is a 60 by 60 square. Now, if you don't know your metric those were those were measurements in centimeters. Those translate into a one foot by four foot striplight in a two foot by two foot square. And then an expensive softbox and grid is also available you can check these out in the LED section of the MoLight store at go mo live.com geo mo li GH t.com Thank you again for joining me for a Monday morning cup of Mo please subscribe and follow. I'll also be posting more information on the podcast Facebook page, so be sure to follow that as well. And join the Monday morning cup of Mo podcast group where you can ask questions, suggest topics and join the rest of the community as we grow this together. Talk to you next week.