AC slaves

[Dennis Strickland]

Who knows anything about these? I've seen them advertised in B&H and Adorama. They supposedly screw into a standard light socket. How effective are these and are they worth a try to add to indoor lighting?

Yeah, I'm still lurking out here.

Dennis.

[MJS]

They are usually used as an affordable accent lamp for backgrounds, etc. You can figure out there relative strength by checking out the GN rating.

Good to hear from you again. Long time no hear.

[Asylum Steve]

My understanding is that these are popular with interior shooters as simple ways to even out (or accent) a room's lighting. Not sure how effective they'd be for more straight forward shooting...

[drg]

The AC slaves are fine for hairlights or if you've got a lot of fixtures they work. You'll probably want to use a flash or flash/incident meter and if you're not shooting digital don't use them for any color critical application.

Tungsten balancing isn't easy with mixed light on film. It can be done but it is an expensive and time consumptive process.

They do come in handy when shooting in mixed light if your're using a non first curtain flash environment. In other words the flash fires/syncs to something other than the leading edge of the shutter. There are systems where you can fire strobes, and then, hot slaves (daylight for the strobes and tungsten for the second light) and then something else if you want.

Some architectural and interior shooters use a HMI lighting setup where the Color temp can be dialed in Kelvin. I personally think its is easier with digital to measure the Color Temp and adjust accordingly. In a large interior layout that has light fixtures that you want to catch both the design of the lamp and the shade/or fixture and the light "throw pattern" a relatively lengthy, 1/5 to 1/15 shutter speed and appropriate aperture for what the meter indicates will let you do "multiple syncs" or a second curtain to catch both sets of details.

Since they are effectively a standard lamp with a sensor and some electronics, they will change characteristics as they heat and cool. The light pattern may change as the filament warms and cools. Don't forget to orient the filament so that it doesn't cast an undesirable shadow or hot spot or use them only bounced off umbrellas or reflectors.

These have kind of been supplanted in softboxes with the fluorescents lamps. The f-lites you can leave on and nothing melts!

Good luck and let us know how you fare.

[Dennis Strickland]

Thanks Y'all for getting back with me. I'm shooting film still but now using medium format more than 35mm. I've never used studio flash am researching monolights, pack units, etc. I saw these and figured that somehow they would supplement a set up. I think I'll pick a couple up and play with them since they are pretty inexpensive as far as flash goes.

Dennis.