Ghetto lightbox

Ghetto lightbox

I was discussing light modifiers with a model who also runs a studio, as part of an arts complex. She’s recently bought a single flash unit to go with a couple of cheap LED lights, which have white brollies. We were discussing softboxes, which aren’t that costly these days - £25 will get you one that’s 120x80cm. But the flash was there, and the brollies were there, and so I played.



Now, really cheap brollies are white nylon, and have a degree of see-through that would be entirely appropriate for a Patrick Lichfield Unipart calendar… so while the obvious thing is to bounce the light out of the brolly, it can be highly productive to just point the flash as the subject through the brolly.



It happens that I’d been musing about my first ever brolly, which was a thing called a Paraflash – I ended up with one white one and one gold one. These were very simple, with a crudely-machined flash shoe where you’d expect the handle, and a socket for a tripod screw in the bottom of the block of metal. I ‘modified’ my Paraflash units to fit studio flash units – but then, among the bits and pieces of photographic stuff that I’ve acquired, I found a cardboard tube marked ‘Polysales’ with their version snuggling inside.

Polysales were a firm in Godalming around 1980 who sold all manner of interesting, often own-branded kit and chemicals. I don’t know when they disappeared from the landscape – I remember buying stuff from them on my way between Winchester – where I lived at the time – and Strobe Studios and The Beehive in London. But that’s another story…



I’d also acquired a very Fifties tripod: multiple sections of slender brass leg, tall, elegant and fragile… Only my inability to find my flash extension lead led me to an inauthentic setup, with a radio trigger for the manual-only Sunpak flash. I even shot with my Spotmatic, though I admit to taking readings with a meter, and trying a shot on a digital camera first…

The top and bottom of it is this: while all of us who shoot a lot with lighting can be precious about EXACTLY what light modifiers to use, a brolly is a lot cheaper than the other options – you can get a couple with (flimsy) stands and continuous lights for £20, and the light is lovely and soft. You may even be able to beg, borrow or steal a brolly – a lot of people have got them as part of a kit, and aren’t that fussed about using them.

Mind you, if you’re really desperate, you can do what I did before the Paraflash – Evo Stik and kitchen foil collided with my Mum’s old and tatty umbrella…