083 281 9124 info@warrenjames.co.za

Photon Lighting

by | Aug 16, 2016

“Photon’s great range of quality lighting units as well as light modifiers allows me to manipulate my lighting just the way I need it.”

How I started with Photon Lighting

I came across Photon lighting during last year’s photo & film expo and remembered a good friend of mine telling me about the unique beauty dishes they were producing. I stopped at the stall to take a closer look at what they had to offer. I was intrigued by the unconventional and interesting light modifiers they had on offer as well as the location and continuous lighting kits they had at their stand. What also caught my attention was that all their light units were housed in tough aluminium casings and not the typical cheap plastic casings we often see from many competitors.

I later got the opportunity to meet the guys at Fotacs (S.A. agents) and they gave me some location lighting gear to take out for  hands-on testing. What I found was hardy, powerful and ultra practical equipment that suited me perfectly as a location portrait photographer. My relationship with the guys from Photon developed and I’m really happy to now represent this brand.

What I need from my lighting equipment

When I’m out creating beautiful images for my clients I like to use whatever tools is necessary to create the images I have in mind. I need gear to be portable, rugged and reliable. I am often faced with very harsh lighting conditions and need to be able to overpower the sun when the situation demands it. This means that in the harsh African mid day sun I would need a powerful source of light to do the trick. As if that is not enough I also need lighting that will allow me to shoot at wide apertures in bright daylight. This would mean that I need to be able to shoot at sync speeds of up to 8000th of a second.

Another important aspect to my lighting requirements is a large assortment of light modifiers that can get the light to do what I needed to. In my opinion this is what could make or break a photo session and is something that a lot of photographers overlook.

Atmospheric backgrounds in mid day sun:

In comes Photon’s high powered, high sync-speed location lights!

I am currently using 400W and 600W location lighting units. It is fantastic to see how my 600W units are able to overpower the sun at 3pm while shooting through a 2.1m parabolic brollie with a diffusing cover…. That is crazy soft light at extremely high power.

Added to this is the high speed sync which allows me to shoot at fast shutter speeds (typically 1/2500th to 1/8000th of a second) and wide apertures giving beautiful bokeh and atmospheric backgrounds in mid day sun.