The fine folks at B&H Photo were kind enough to send me some of their studio gear from the house brand Impact. I’ve written a little review about each individual piece and this post is designed to be the index. If the prices of studio support equipment usually makes you wince then you should definitely take a look at the Impact brand. Please do take a look at the reviews as there are some caveats with some products but over all I’ve been pretty impressed.
Not everyone has the luxury of a proper dedicated studio space so what do you do when you need to set up a quick backdrop for a shoot ? The answer could be to use a pop up backdrop similar to the reflectors that most of us have probably used, only MUCH bigger! Impact makes what they call an 8×16′ background which is actually an 8×8 popup square with an 8×16′ fabric extension sewn onto it to use as your ‘infinite’ background. When you are done your shoot, the whole thing folds flat into a bag for easy storage in
There’s a reason that this Impact product has a long name, it’s designed to do a lot of stuff! To begin with, it looks like a light stand and of course, you can use it in this way but, to be honest, its strengths are in other areas and there are better light stands. The spigot on the top seemed to be an odd sizing when I tested it with my Einstein strobe, there was a lot of play in it and the metal was very soft and easily damaged with the screw clamp. More so than other stands that
The first thing of note about the Impact 13′ light stand is that it’s actually not that heavy. Heavy-duty yes, but not that heavy. Sounds odd right? Well, all I can say is that when compared to some of my small light stands it’s a comparable weight BUT it extends to a much larger height! I was so happy to see this that I immediately threw it in a bag and flew off to a photo competition taking place in Austria. Weight is important when you are trying to fit all your gear within the requisite baggage limits but I
If you ever shoot a lot of still life or product photos then chances are you have looked at buying some sort of light tent or shed before. They offer a quick solution for softening you strobes or continuous lights and they tend to pack down small enough that storage is no issue. I was sent the Impact XL Digital Light Shed to take a look at and I’ve used similar products in the past to shoot images for product reviews or small products for catalogs. This particular Light Shed has a lot of options and accessories to get you