Studio photography is something I haven’t really done so far. From time to time, I have had the opportunity or felt the need to take photos of some object or another, but apart from that I never felt drawn to that kind of photography. Portraits are also something I have never considered taking. Then again, you never know if something might be of interest to you if you never try it. So I decided to equip myself with a small studio set that isn’t too expensive.

Most of the time I will use the system in a room that is less than perfect – as many other amateur photographers will. The most limiting factor is that the room is in the attic which means that only a very small part of the room is 2.6m high with ceilings sloping down on both sides. Thus, portraits of people standing will only be possible if they are not too tall. A more severe problem is that I can’t place a wide background – I will discuss that later in this posting. For product photography (up to a certain size) the room should be usable and the white ceilings can serve as large reflectors for soft light.

After extensive counseling by my local dealer, I decided to go with a set of monolights plus accessories by the name of Helios which is a brand by the German wholesale company B.I.G. While the devices are probably being manufactured somewhere in the far East and the quality is probably not quite as good as that of some other brands, the Helios monolights do come with local support by my dealer and B.I.G. which means that in case of a problem I won’t have to deal with a company in some distant country.

I decided to go with the Helios 300C which, as the name suggests, has a flash power of 300 Ws. The flash power can be reduced by up to 5 stops in steps of 1/10th of a stop. The monolights are equipped with auto dumping, i.e. if you reduce the power, the capacitors are partially discharged – without that function you would need to trigger the monolight whenever you reduce the flash power. A beep sounds when the capacitors are down to the level you chose.

The Helios 300C

The monolights also have a modeling light with a power of 150 W. In the base setting (which I prefer to use), the brightness of the modeling light is proportional to the flash power setting. This allows to get a pretty good idea in situations where you use two or more monolights at different power settings since the modeling lights of the individual devices then have different brightness as well. You can, however, set the brightness of the flash and the modeling light independent of each other or switch off the modeling light completely if that is better suited for your application.

On the back side of the monolight, there is a display showing all of the settings like the selected flash power and modeling light power (both on a scale from 1 to 6) plus various settings and some information like the temperature. As you can imagine, those things get warm when they are turned on and this allows you to see how warm – a fan within the monolight provides some cooling. The manual says that there is a risk of overheating when you do a lot of auto dumping. It also recommends that you don’t trigger the flash more than 12 times per minute over a 10 minute period or more than 10 times per minute over a 30 minute period. If you have a longer shoot with lots of flashes, it is recommended to have a break of at least 30 minutes before starting again. The situation gets worse when using narrow reflectors, e.g., or when the monolight is pointing downward.

There are three ways to trigger the monolights. One is via an optical slave sensor which triggers the monolight when any flash in the vicinity is being fired. There are different settings for this slave sensor that allow you to use it with flashes that send out one or two pre-flashes and you can also turn the slave sensor off. The second way to trigger a monolight is via a sync cable directly from the camera. The third way is to attach the receiver of a remote trigger. Technically, there is also a fourth way: By pressing a certain button on the back of the device, but this is obviously for test purposes only.

The Helios 300C monolights are equipped with a Bowens mount which means that there are plenty of reflectors and other accessories available not only from the Helios brand but also from many other manufacturers that support this widely used mount.

My Configuration

I opted to go with a set that was offered by B.I.G. via my dealer. That set includes three Helios 300C monolights with standard reflectors, light stands for each of them, an 80 cm by 100 cm softbox, a spherical non-transparent umbrella with a white inside and a barn door with color filters and insertable grid. Also included are a remote trigger and receiver and a remote control for the settings of the monolights and all cables necessary. The complete package comes in a rolling case which is a little over 1.1 m long and is quite heavy when everything is inside.

This configuration allows for some basic lighting scenarios and over time I will certainly add other accessories – I will keep you updated in this blog. Even after only a short while I can say that setting up the softbox is a real pain: There is a speed ring which you first have to place in the hole in the middle of the softbox. You then need to put four rods into the ring and into the corresponding places in the softbox where the tension needed for the final rod is quite high. (Update: After about two years of not really frequent use the seam in one place has decided that it can’t bear the tension any longer; the softbox is still usable but it has become even more tedious to set it up. I have thus moved to a different solution for most applications which I describe in another post.)

My way of triggering the monolights is usually as follows: The remote trigger is attached to the hot shoe of my EOS 6D (which I need to set to 1/125th of a second as faster shutter speeds don’t synchronize with this remote and this camera). The receiver is then plugged into one of the monolights. The other monolights have their slave sensors activated and thus fire as soon as the one with the remote receiver fires. (Update: Meanwhile, I use a Yongnuo transceiver set for the main light while the others are still used as optical slaves.)

For the few portrait sessions I have had so far, I have only used two of the monolights. However, it is quite nice to have the third one available just in case one of the other monolights has a technical problem. One of the monolights then has the softbox attached and usually is the main light source while the second one is equipped with the reflective umbrella; when placed at about the same distance as the softbox, I set it to be about one to two stops less in power, turning it into a fill light. I am by no means an experienced portrait photographer and there are certainly much better ways, but this is what I have been using so far, producing results that are not too shabby.

The equipment described is complemented by a simple background system, consisting of a 2.75 m wide paper backdrop and stands to hold it. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, my room for studio photography doesn’t allow me to use this backdrop. There, I will need some other solution which I haven’t decided on yet. (Update: I have bought an IKEA Tupplur roller blind that I attached to a strip of wood.) So far, my portrait shoots have been in other places which brings me to the final point in this post: One of the important factors for me was portability. I can pack all of that stuff – the rolling case with the monolights plus all accessories, the backdrop system plus, of course, my camera and lenses – into my car and can set everything up in any location as long as the room is large enough and the electricity supply has decent fuses.

As promised, I will report on experiences I have made – the good, the bad and the ugly – and will also keep you informed on any additions to this set which are bound to follow. Unfortunately, I can’t show any photos taken so far here as these have been taken for other people.