How to mount a photek softlighter ii to a monolight...

JohnRog

I just ordered one of the flashpoint 300ws (ii) monolights and I have a photek softlighter ii that I'll be using with it... I know the conventional mounting for it, buy what I'm interested in is mounting it backwards on a boom stand (where it hangs from the top piece of the umbrella)... Any suggestions on how to attach the flash head that way, or will it be obvious once I have the monolight in hand?

Thanks :-)


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ziggy53

Your SoftLighter II is intended to be used in only one way. In order to reverse the SoftLighter you'll possibly need 2 modifications:

1) The stem may either be removable or fixed, depending on the particular model you purchased. If you purchased the model with the fixed stem, it may be too long if you reverse the SoftLighter. You may need to chop off part of the stem to keep it out of the picture and allow the SoftLighter to be close to your subject.

Of course, if you purchased the model with the removable stem, just unscrew the stem and you're set.

2) The back side of the SoftLighter does not have an entry port, so you may need to cut a port for the flash head to project into the SoftLighter. Of course, you can always just shoot the flash through the back side with the cover intact. You'll get double-diffusion that way, but you'll be hitting a white convex surface, so the light scatter and light loss will probably be substantial.

If you have a speedlight/speedlite there is another possibility, but it requires a bit of ingenuity. Fortunately user "angevin1", (Tom) has already done some experimenting and he has come up with a suitable mount:

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1515781&postcount=40

JohnRog

Thanks Ziggy! I knew I had seen a thread where Tom had rigged his to hang from a boom (I think it was the pull back one) but I wasn't sure how he did it... I did get the one with the removable shaft... I've used it backward with a speedlight on a regular light stand by clamping the umbrella tip in the stand's regular umbrella holder, but I didn't have anything quite so elegant as Tom's setup. I strapped the flash to the umbrella shaft with 2 ball bungee cords. This, of course, didn't let me angle the softlighter down too much but it did allow me to get the unit closer to my subject. I was hoping that I might be able to mount the monolight facing into the softlighter so that it would be reflected the same way as normal, but have the whole thing attached to the stand from the back... If I can figure something out when it gets here I'll be sure to share it...
Thanks again,

John



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