Category Archives: Lighting

200 Dollars Worth of Batteries

Posted on by

The first picture is a couple of bags worth of me doing my part to destroy the planet. I use my small flashes a lot, and go through batteries like crazy. I can’t tell you how long that is from, but with 3 flashes, one change of batteries equals 24 batteries. I don’t use all three each shoot, but sometimes I do, and I always want to get to a shoot with fresh ones ready to go.

The second picture is what spending $200 on batteries and a charger get you. You read that right, the 8 battery charger that can charge in as little as one hour cost almost $100, and luckily came with 8 batteries. I then purchased 4 more sets of 4 batteries, which at $20 each, throw in some shipping, and voila, $200.

Why did I pick these ones? Drew Gurian. He is an assistant to Joe McNally (and a great photographer himself), and when I was a DLWS workshop, Drew was showing us his gear. I figured, if these batteries are good enough for Joe, then they have to be good enough for me!

PS. The noisy pics were taken with my iPhone, and not really enough light.

The Jeffery Clamp

Posted on by

Have you heard of the Justin Clamp? It is made by Manfrotto, and you can get it here from Adorama. It costs $54. Recently I saw a post via twitter on adapting it to work work with a SB900, because the clamp is for a SB800. I can’t find the article/pics, or I would link to it.

Anyway, I have put together my own clamp like this with parts from Adorama.

The above clamp is what it looks like put together. There are three parts that you need.

So, for $32.65 you get pretty much the same thing, but you get pieces that you can reuse for other purposes if needed. Also, this shoe mount will fit any flash, including the SB900.

Ok, why do I call this the Jeffery Clamp? Well, I order stuff through Jeff Snyder at Adorama, so that’s the name I gave it. Give him a shout if you need help ordering stuff from Adorama. (jsnyder@adorama.com)

So, what do I use it for? Well, it can be clamped onto anything, which makes is quite versatile, but here is one thing I used it for recently.

Look at the upper right of this image. See the light there? It is an SB900 on my Jeffery Clamp, connected to the background stand. No need for another pole. I used this like a hair light, or a side light depending on where I aimed the light. Here is a picture where the light was added to bring more light to the right side of her hair.