Gear Review - Think Tank Photo Flash Mob V3.0

Today we take a look at the Think Tank Photo Flash Mob V3.0 pouch.  This is a pouch designed specifically to hold hotshoe flashes and spare batteries.

On the left and right sides are two small pockets which are sized perfectly for 4 AA batteries each (for a total of 8 extra batteries).

If you're a fan of the Godox series of hotshoe flashes that feature the lithium ion battery packs, those batteries will also fit in the side pockets - though it's a pretty tight fit and you won't be able to close the cover flap.

The front face of the pouch has a large stretchy pocket which can hold an 8-cell external battery pack such as the Canon CP-E3.

The Flash Mob V3.0 will accommodate just about any type of hotshoe flash - with or without modifiers.

The Godox AD200 fits just fine as well.

With the recent release of the extension head for the AD200, at first I thought I could run it from the pouch.

However, that would block the vents on the sides of the AD200 and lead to overheating.  A better solution is to use either the Peak Design Capture clip or the Spiderholster and attach it to the ThinkTank Camera Clip Adapter instead.

Like the rest of the V3.0 Modular series, the rain cover has now been integrated into the bottom rear of the pouch, allowing for quicker one-handed access.

The top of the pouch is designed in such a way that it can be flipped open so that you have quicker access to your flash. Useful if you want to keep a modifier on the flash during a run and gun shoot.

If you use the MagMod series of flash modifiers, the pouch can accommodate a flash with a MagGrip installed.

For weddings I usually keep a Godox V850 flash with a MagGrip attachment in this pouch. I store a MagGrid and MagGel holder in the front pocket.

This allows me to snap on a MagSphere or a MagBounce to the front of the pouch when I'm not using it.

Overall the Think Tank Flash Mob V3.0 is a great way to keep a hotshoe flash handy when you're running and gunning.

As always, if you find this review useful please consider using the links on this page to purchase your Think Tank gear.  A small portion of your purchase goes to helping us maintain this blog and allow us to continue doing gear reviews.

Random overexposures? Repair a Canon hotshoe flash mount

Ran into a problem on a recent gig where my Canon 580EX started giving me really weird exposure problems.  I was shooting in Aperture-Priority mode, flash in ETTL mode and every so often the flash would shoot full power, regardless of the flash exposure compensation setting.  This would completely blow out the frame and ruin the shot.

A friend and fellow photographer mentioned that he was having the same problems with his camera and his brand new 580EXII and couldn't figure out why it was doing that.  I finally found the cause and thankfully, the fix is really easy and inexpensive to do.  If you are experiencing the same problem of random full power flash dumps, try this and see if it works for you.

***DISCLAIMER*** I make no guarantees about this repair and have no idea if it will void your warranty.  I only know that this procedure was simple and fixed the problem for me.

All you will need to do this repair is a precision screwdriver set which you can find at Amazon for about 6 dollars.

 

1. Make sure your camera is off. Mount the flash on your camera's hotshoe and lock it down.

2. Very gently (and I mean VERY GENTLY), try rocking the flash from side to side and look at the camera's hotshoe to see if it flexes.  If it does, then you have found the problem.  Poor connection of the pins on the bottom of the flash to the hotshoe will impair the communication from camera to flash leading to misfires.

3. Take the flash off the camera.

4. Looking at the top of the hotshoe,  take a small flathead screwdriver and gently slide it in and under the inner plate of the hotshoe.  To remove the plate, slightly lift it up with the screwdriver and you should be able to slide it out easily (don't force it). 

Remember which way the plate faces and which ends are bent up and which are bent down. You will need to put it back in the same way.

5. Once the inner plate is removed, you will see four tiny Phillips screws. 

Take your smallest Phillips screwdriver and tighten each one until the hotshoe no longer wiggles around. Be careful not to over tighten and strip the screws.

6. Replace the inner plate.  Be sure to put it back in the correct orientation.

7. Reattach your flash and test it.  You're done!



Hope this was useful to some of you who were having the same problem.

Dragging the shutter to control the background

In a previous post I mentioned using the shutter speed to control the exposure level of the background when shooting a sunset.  A recent wedding couple I photographed was kind enough to help me illustrate this idea.

The following series of images of Tamra and John were taken with a Canon 7D with a 24-105 f4 L IS lens.  I used a set of Pocket Wizards to trigger an off-camera Nikon SB-26 hotshoe flash set at 1/2 power.  The SB-26 was mounted on a lightstand to camera right about 10 feet away from the couple, and modified with a Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe Softbox. A 1/4 CTO gel was added to the flash to warm the light up a little.

Everything on the camera was set manually - the iso was set to 400, and the aperture remained at f4.  The only thing that changed between shots was the shutter speed.  I started at a shutter speed of 1/30th and gradually increased the shutter speed until the sky darkened to my liking.  The total time it to make all these images was less than a minute.

Notice how the exposure level of the couple does not change throughout.  This is because the aperture, iso, distance of the light to the subject, and the power level of the flash do not change.  Only the shutter speed changes, which changes the exposure level of the sky.

1/30













1/60













1/100













1/125













1/160













1/250













The only limit to how dark I can make the sky is the flash sync speed of the camera.  In this case, the 7D has an upper limit of 1/250, which is pretty good (my 5D only goes to 1/160).  If I go higher than the sync speed, part of the image will be dark, because the shutter is moving too fast for the flash to expose every part of the subject/foreground. If I were to use a Canon flash, like the 580EX, I could go much higher using the high-speed sync mode.

Some people have asked why I use Nikon SB-26 strobes when I'm shooting with Canon gear.  Although I do have a couple of 580EX flashes that I use, I like using the Nikon flashes for a lot of manual flash work because:

a) They have PC sync ports which allow me to trigger them with Pocket Wizards.  Only Canon's newer flash has a PC sync port - the 580EXII.

b) The SB-26s have built in optical slaves so if I run out of Pocket Wizards, I can still trigger them with the pop of another flash.

c) They're durable and cheap enough that I don't have a cow if one breaks.  I've been able to find them in secondhand stores in Japan for around $100 each.  The Canon 580 EXIIs are about 4-5x the cost.

A very busy weekend

This past weekend I did a joint shoot with Chaz from After6Media.com and models Tasha Woodfall and Karin Mie from Honolulu. Makeup was provided by Jessica Waite and Leah Yniguez. It was a two-day shoot, including studio work, sunset at the beach, and shooting at the warehouse. Extremely exhausting, but a lot of fun, and made some new friends in the process.

Karin is a Japanese Brazilian model that I've wanted to collaborate with for a while, ever since I met her on Model Mayhem. She was very fun to work with.


One of the first shots I wanted to do with her was a headshot, as I had not seen any headshots on her portfolio at all. Jessica did some excellent work with Karin's makeup and hair, which made my job much easier.

This headshot was done with a WL1600 in a medium softbox with a 4x6 silver Photoflex reflector for fill. Her hairlight is an SB26 with a grid.



The lighting for this shot is an AB800 in a medium softbox with a grid for her main light and an AB800 in a small strip softbox with a grid behind her for an edge light.



We went to the Cove to try to get a sunset shot. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, so we had to improvise. This headshot was one of the first shots I took of Tasha at the Cove while we were waiting and hoping for the clouds to pass.


We never did get a good sunset, so we tried a different approach. This is lit with an AB800 and a beauty dish.

More to come.

More from Tokyo shoot

Because of airline restrictions, I wasn't able to bring a lot of lighting gear to Japan, and I wasn't sure what would be available to us in terms of lighting at the studio we rented until I got there. So I brought along my Strobist lighting kit consisting of 2 Canon 550ex strobes, a couple of umbrellas, stands, and my RadioPopper triggers (I really love those!)

To emulate a ringflash look, I setup one lightstand with two strobes firing through shoot-thru umbrellas, mounted one above the other in a clamshell style lighting setup. Both strobes were set on manual at about 1/8th power, and I positioned my camera between the two umbrellas. Image shot with a Canon 5D and 85mm 1.8 lens.



This one was done with the two shoot-thru umbrellas again, this time each strobe was mounted on its own stand. The lights were setup on either side of the model, slightly behind her, and aimed directly at each other. This served to both light the background and rim light the model.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the model IS wearing clothes. It's the way she is posed that hides the bikini she is wearing. So it's kind of an implied nude, without being an implied nude.

New photography website under construction

I have a web designer working on a new Flash version of my photography portfolio website. She's a model/photographer/web designer I met through Model Mayhem.

The cool thing is, we've never met face to face. She's located in Lima, Peru.

What even cooler is, she's only 17.

I've already had the chance to see the preliminary work she's done for my site and it's way beyond anything I'd be able to create on my own.

Check out her work at www.design.valeriafigallo.net.

Off-Camera Lighting

Ever since I started visiting Strobist to learn more about lighting, I've been trying to make it a habit of experimenting with what I've learned every chance I get.  This past Friday I had the chance to do a shot I've always wanted to try - backlighting the couple at the altar.

Usually with Canon strobes, you need to have line of sight to your slave flash in order for it to fire.  In the past I had used the ST-E2 transmitter on top of the camera to trigger the slave flash.  This was pretty much hit or miss whenever the slave flash was behind something - a door, a model, Darth Vader, etc.  

Someone suggested I use 2 strobes - a slave off camera, and one on the camera as a master trigger.  The flash on-camera can be set to just triggering the slave, but not firing itself.  Apparently this allows for better range/reliability than just using the ST-E2 transmitter.

For this shot I had my assistant put the flash on the altar positioning it so that the head of the flash came right between the couple's faces.  I then fired off several shots until we got this one.  One of the things to watch out for is to make sure you don't see the flash head in the viewfinder when you take  the shot.  Since the flash is firing back toward you, if your camera sensor sees the direct flash, it will seriously underexpose the shot and you won't get the cool backlighting effect.