Opinion on ProPhoto lighting kits?

Flutist

A friend of mine just asked my opinion of ProPhoto lighting kits found on Ebay. I have no experience with them, but told him I'd ask here.


This kit specifically

mayassa

Flutist wrote:

A friend of mine just asked my opinion of ProPhoto lighting kits found on Ebay. I have no experience with them, but told him I'd ask here.

Any link?

Flutist

Duh!!! Sorry, updated OP with linky!! :ivar

ziggy53

Note that these should not be confused with "Profoto" monolights, which are wonderful lights. These lights really are very inexpensive and may not be very durable or repeatable or consistent in output.

Note that the lights are not rated as to "actual/rated" or "effective" power output. All they say is "True watt-seconds" which is not an industry standard nomenclature. They do give a guide number of 45m/160ft which is quite low as far as monolights go.

The softboxes are simple and not double diffused, so they will probably yield harder shadows than better softboxes. The light stands are very short and mostly suitable for seated portraits or possibly product photography. The 34" umbrella is also very small and not very suitable for most portraiture.

I'm afraid that I would not recommend these lights for primary but they might be useful as secondary or background lights.

The inexpensive lights I can recommend are the FlashPoint monolights from Adorama, which I use even professionally, and the Alien Bee monolights by Paul Buff. The least "effective" watt-seconds I recommend for the 2 primary lights, key and fill, are 600 watt-seconds each (effective). Anything less and you are pretty limited to large f-stops in many lighting situations. Good softboxes will absorb around 2 stops of light and good umbrellas around 1 stop, so more power is usually better than less for the primary lights.

I also recommend using a 45" umbrella, in shoot thru configuration, as the key light for 1-2 people and a 60" umbrella for more people. A 36" x 36" double diffused softbox also works pretty well.

Some examples:

A 4 light setup, with 2 monolights (1800 ws each), a speedlight on the camera for additional fill and trigger and a small handle-bracket light on a tripod behind for background:



2 monolights:



2 monolights: