Honl Photo Traveller8 Softbox Review

Honl Photographic was awesome enough to send me their Traveller8 Softbox for their speed strap system in preparation for my upcoming PPA Super Monday workshop on "Off-Camera Flash Techniques." I took it out for a spin and put it through its paces and am really, really, really happy with the results.



From HonlPhoto.com: "Create beautiful soft light from David's innovative new softbox design, with the quality and sturdiness you've come to expect from all Honl Photo Professional lighting products. Extremely easy to setup and attach to your shoe-mount flash unit using our popular Speed Strap (included). Folds flat to tuck into your camera bag, and weighs in at less than 4 ounces. Provides a pleasing circular catchlight in your subject's eyes. Fits most any shoe-mount flash by Nikon or Canon as well as larger units like the Vivitar 285."

The size of the softbox is roughly 11x9 inches folded and its look and feel is very rugged. It will definitely hold its own and I have confidence that it will not rip or tear even with me beating on it.

I photographed a senior portrait session over at a local park here and my setup was REAL simple. We're talking just my Nikon D700, Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR Lens, PocketWizard Plus II Transceivers, Nikon SB-900 Speedlight, Portable Light stand and the Honl Photo Traveller8 Softbox. I started shooting with a camera strap again which is nice because I can cart around my light stand with ease and throw my camera over my shoulder to free up my hands when working with my flash settings and whatnot.

Since I was using the PocketWizards, I had to shoot with my Nikon SB-900 speedlight in Manual mode. This also meant that I had to conform to my camera's maximum sync speed (1/250") and could not do any high-speed sync whatsoever.

I had to work the power of the flash, the distance between the flash and subject, ISO and Aperture to control the effect my flash had in the photo while my shutter speed simply controlled the amount of ambient light recorded. The Honl Traveller8 softbox is small enough to provide a tight light pattern on my subject and didn't really light anything that I didn't want it to. Since it is small, that also means that it won't get knocked over during windy days nearly as easy as my large 60" umbrella or 28" Westcott Apollo softbox. Due to the Traveller8's size and light pattern, I would really only use this for lighting a couple people. Any more and I would move to a larger light modifier like the 28" Apollo softbox or my 60" umbrella.

Here are some shots from the portrait session with the Traveller8 Softbox:








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The Honl Photo Traveller8 Softbox is $70 at B&H and comes packaged with a Speed Strap so that is an added bonus.

I would highly recommend this product for it's price, portability and usefulness for on-the-go lighting. I'd love to hear your thought on it if you own one too so comment below and share your experiences.

Thanks for stopping by!
Mike

Instaproofs.com Review

I was never big on image hosting companies probably because I have always been burned in the past. I started off using Imagequix which was great but then moved to Pictage because all the "rock star" photographers were using them.

I have had some real big issues with Pictage back in 2006-2007 so I made the move to collages.net where I stayed for a couple years. Business was picking up in 2008 and my first year promotion with collages.net was up so I switched back to Pictage (under new management. I can vouch that they did clean things up since then and are now actually great to work with). I made the switch back because I was looking to outsource some of my work like album design and print fulfillment which was well worth it. Now, that I re-branded once again as Michael Alan Bielat Photographers I am focusing less on the quantity of weddings that I shoot and more on the quality of weddings that I shoot. This involved a considerable price increase for my wedding photography services and whatnot. I am not imagining to be shooting 30+ weddings with this price increase so I didn't want to be locked into a contract with an online proofing company which I may or may not use as much as I used to... That was the only reason why I left Pictage once again.



So that left me in the market once again with needing a new image hosting company. Enter instaproofs.com! First and foremost, it is FREE to host your images with them. That's right F-R-E-E! Secondly, they have a great user interface that is intuitive to the users and allows for you to sell your prints even. No they don't have a full team to design albums for you or to handle your print fulfillment but man FREE is a tough thing to pass up!

How it works: You set up an account with instaproofs.com All you have to do is create an event and then you can use their drag and drop user interface to add images to the event. You can even FTP the images to them directly if you have more than 50 or so. A couple clickity clicks and that's it, the event is live. You can set an expiration date, add a password to the event and a whole slew of other things. You even get to add a promotion like 25% off prints to try and boost print sales.

The only gotcha with this FREE hosting thing here is that Instaproofs does take 15% out of your print sales to help keep them alive. This is great because they don't get paid unless you do. It is a real nice way to help them out so they can continue doing what they do without you being tied to any contracts or monthly payments. For example, I just got a print order for $330 and Instaproofs received around $50 out of that. No problem whatsoever in my book because I didn't have to pay a monthly fee. I don't know about you but I do not rely on my print sales from weddings or events that I shoot. I consider these a "bonus" and put it towards equipment purchases or fun stuff for the family. Since I don't rely on it, that means it isn't super important so this free hosting is great! Here is what they say on their website: "Instaproofs does what it can to maximize your time, and minimize your costs. Your 15% (maximum) commission goes to pay for the credit card processing fees, merchant account fees, image storage costs, site improvements, unlimited uploading and downloading bandwidth, stellar tech support, multiple order management tools, automated email marketing, etc."

The second gotcha is that YOU need to do the print fulfillment yourself. I am cool with this because I love WHCC so I had no problem finding a reason to use them more. I was going to use WHCC's Pickpic service and pay their one time $1500 fee to do so but they recently switched over to monthly payments so that was out of the questions. Now I get affordable image hosting AND I get to use the print lab that I love. Win-win in my book. I use WHCC's ROES interface to place the order and have the prints drop shipped directly to the buyer.

So I cannot recommend instaproofs.com enough. I never had to use their Customer Service but they are a pleasure to work with. You get to set your own prices and you get to rake in print sales without ever worrying about paying for monthly plans.

For more info, visit instaproofs at www.instaproofs.com

~Mike