Lighting

Most of my landscape and wildlife images use ambient lighting. I bought all of my lighting gear for use in my former professional portrait photography business. Normally, I don’t use supplemental lighting, but when the occasion requires, I know how to use it. Speedlights provide a low power (~75ws) very short duration lighting. It can stop action, but has very limited reach. The Elinchrom lights on the other hand are longer duration, but much more power, mine are 400ws. If you need to stop the action while using the Elinchrom lights, use a faster shutter speed.

• Sekonic Speedmaster L-858D-U Light Meter

• Speedlights

  • Nikon SB-900 Speedlight AF (2)

  • Nikon SB-800 Speedlight AF (2)

  • Nikon SD-9 and SD-8a external battery packs

• Visual Echoes Better Beamer FX-6 Flash Extender

• Elinchrom Light System (when more power is needed)

  • D-Lite RX4 Lights (400ws) - these lights are portable enough to take outside and they have high-sync so I can shoot up to 1/8000 sec shutter speeds and still have some reach. If I needed more reach, Elinchrom offers 1200ws strobes with battery packs that are really portable.

  • A few Softboxes and Light Modifers

  • Elinchrom EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus HS (High-Sync)

  • Paul Buff Vagabond battery and their special battery attachment to a light stand. The battery isn’t very heavy and provides 1000+ full power dumps.

• Black Diamond Head Lamp - I have several headlamps located in multiple locations. You never know when you need to light the dark!