I was reading about Lastolite’s KickerLite recently. It’s essentially a softbox that goes on the floor and angles upward, allowing to fill a subject from beneath. Great for portrait. It folds up nicely (a bit like the Hilite) and I’m sure it’s a joy to work with. It’s $265 (CDN). Well worth it I’m sure. But still…

So anyway… I was cleaning up my studio yesterday, trying to organize things a bit better. It’s a small studio, with space at a premium, and I was thinking of folding up the two Portalite softboxes that came with the Elinchrom BX500ri kit I bought a while ago. They’re fine but a little small and I don’t use them all that much (I usually prefer the 60″ Softlighter). I put one down on the floor while trying to decide what to do and noticed its angle: more or less 45 degrees. And stable. I also thought: “hmm… an SB-900 would fit perfectly through that Elinchrom speedring.”

I was right. And now I have my KickerLite:

In fact, I can even have two of them if I want :-)

This diagramed shoot shows the effect it has. It works really well for a clamshell lighting look,  and since it’s used as fill the SB-900 doesn’t even flinch at the job: I’m at 1/128 power, shooting at f6.3 with the BX500ri as key. I could go way up with this setup.

New gear is nice. Finding uses for the gear you already have: priceless.

I’ve said it before: Zack Arias’s blog is a must-read for me. I love his pictures and I love how much he shares with the community. This week he posted a series he shot with the band Living Things where he used the Multiple Exposure mode on his D3 which also happens to be available on my D300 :-)…

It’s the kind of thing that can easily be dismissed as gadgety – which is pretty much how I had classified it after having played with it for about 3 whole minutes when I first got this camera. But his use of it made me rethink that position. It can become a pretty exciting tool and the reandom aspect of it is actually something that gets me excited. Here’s one of his pics:

Living Things - by Zack Arias

Technicalities
You’ll find this mode under the Shooting menu. It’s pretty sparse on options:
- You can select the number of shots that will be used (from 2 to 10).
- You can set Auto-Gain on or off.

This last setting turns out to be quite important actually. By default, Auto-Gain is set to On, meaning the camera averages every shot for a final blend that won’t blow out too much. Which means you get no control over the composition. Not good in my book. Setting it to Off definitely opens up the real power of  this feature by allowing you to blend as you go simply by controlling your exposure. Shoot your main subject at full exposure, then shoot something you want less prominent a couple of stops lower and things start to get interesting. It’s all about imagining the final result in your mind as you shoot.

Following are a couple of pics I took – Isn’t it darn nice to discover new stuff in something you already own?