Testing new Gear – Triflector and Lastolite EZYBOX (20″)

Got a whole bunch of new grip and lighting gear over the last few days and found a bit of time to do some basic testing in between paperwork to save my sanity before I go stir crazy. Managed to entice Prabha to stand in as model for the tests with promises of tea and cake as payment (she’s easily pleased 🙂 ) Here was the setup:

My impression of the ezybox is that it’s miles better than straight flash (obviously), but I prefer the feel and softer fall-off you get with shoot-through umbrellas. Overall though I was quite pleased with the results and I’m sure I will find a use for it when I want a slightly more sculpted shadow on the subject.

1 big downside. My SB-900 doesn’t fit into the ezybox coldshoe(!), so I had to use an SB-800. This is surprising considering that ithe ezybox is a newish piece of kit and the SB-900 has been available for quite a while.

<Correction: The SB-900 does fit, I just had to fit it on the other side of the coldshoe as it’s tapered to fit different sizes>

The Triflector is basically 3 small-med sized triangular reflectors mounted on a 3 legged bracket via rubber grips that let you position them in almost any direction. This gives an interesting catchlight in the eyes and give a more complete wrap of light around the subject.

Useful if you use just one light as I did here, and a viable alternative to clamshell lighting, although with the amount of coverage it throws back in the face it slightly washes out detail. I can see it being useful for muting the features of subjects with a lot of character in their face (think Gordon Ramsay), but that could defeat the purpose.

Overall I lean towards clamshell as a soft/beauty method due to it’s increase in control as well as giving slightly more contrast in the face. I can see the triflector will work well if I’m doing something corporate, so it will definitely have a home with me

Here are a few of the samples with Prabha so you can see the catchlights/shadow detail: