This week, I bought my first proper shoot-thru umbrella and stand. Although it takes a few minutes to set up, it's an amazing piece of equipment. It wasn't particularly expensive (£54 delivered) and I know I'm going to get a load of use out of it.
I've been taking pics of our son Samuel for months with a flash now (when he was a very small baby, I used a high ISO and fast lens, the latter of which he is too quick for nowadays), but I've wanted to get into using a shoot-thru umbrella with a speedlight - a Canon 430EX - for a while. I don't have the space, budget or inclination to buy expensive studio lights at the moment, so the speedlight is fine.
A few years ago I bought some Yongnuo wireless triggers, so I can control the flash when it's not on top of the camera and with a very simple set up, I took the shot of Samuel, above.
At first glance, you might say that it just looks like a shot taken with a flash or with good room lighting, but I think it looks so much better than the flash-on-camera shots I've been taking recently. The light it balanced across the shot, there aren't any harsh shadows and the quality of the shot overall is much more pleasing.
This was shot #1 taken with the umbrella set-up. After reading the Strobist Lighting 101 series I was able to set up the shot and get this result (well, an incorrectly white-balanced version of it, until I fixed it in Lightroom).
The next challenge is doing all of this with the Mamiya medium format film camera...
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