Anyone seen an adapter like this manufactured?

[Michael Carter]

There's tons of speed rings & stuff to get light modifiers onto strobe heads… there's a few bowens mounts for speed lights - what I wanted was to use my Speedotron reflectors with a Vivitar 185 or a Nikon SB600.

There's some gigs where packs, heads and stands are a problem, quick editorial style stuff. I had a shoot at a local bar for a "bartender of the year" article, but we could only shoot around happy hour, and the place is popular and crowded. But this girl has great skin and one of my favorite things is to use the Speedo 11" reflector as a beauty dish up close.

So I tore apart a beater Speedo head, mounted the front plate to some plywood, used the stand adapter from the head, and stuck a wireless trigger on an old 285. I wanted to light the background with tungsten, shoot at 1/4, and use the strobe to freeze the subject from the handheld motion.

I screwed a baby nail plate into a ceiling rafter, stuck my DIY mess up there, threw a 300 fresnel on the BG, and got the shot, with no stands or cables in the busy bar area. I got F 5.6 @ 1/4, 1000 ISO using 1/4 power from the Vivitar. Instant recycling at 1/4, too. Setup to wrap was about an hour.

I'd like a couple more of these for when the packs are too much and this just kicked ass for me - anyone seen a speedo adapter for speedlights? Speedotron doesn't sell the funky mounting hardware they use, don't want to destroy another head!

The frankenspeedo:



The result:

 

[egproductions]

I don't love mounting speedlights into strobe modifiers because the speedlight already has a built in reflector. Strobe modifiers are typically meant for bare bulb systems where the light spread is really wide.

That being said, for a lightweight and powerful setup (where you can use strobe modifieres), you can consider monolights instead of heads and powerpacks. I would look into the Profoto b1's, quantum flashes or Phottix Indra strobes. They are all fairly small. I personally use an Einstien E640, however, its a bit larger and requires a separate battery pack.

 

[Michael Carter]

I have 5 speedotron packs, about a dozen heads and a couple monolights, and I have a small mountain of speedo modifiers that don't fit anything else. What I want is a low-powered, lightweight, battery powered & radio slaved speedotron monolight, no cables, light enough to hang from a mafer clamp, with a robust yoke setup.

A speedlight has a built in reflector - but it's under 2" wide. I took a small plastic food container (like "tupperware" or similar), frosted it inside with white spray paint, glued it to the mounting plate, and the flash lit that (essentially like one of those little cube diffusers, but I made this the day of the shoot). Functioned just like a bare bulb head. As far as light quality, it's exactly like using a speedo head in the thing… the 11" has been my favorite thing for over 15 years (hair/sides/cheekbones rim light, cosmetics & jewelry, even a key light if the skin can take it).

I turn down a fair amount of local editorial-style stuff, simply because to do it "right" (at least "right" as I envision it) takes more gear and setup than the budget or situation allows. (Well, that stuff pays crap too!) But I don't mind the occasional low-pay gig if I can do something cool, beautiful, or challenging that's not photoshopped to hell and I can get in and out quick. Wouldn't mind having a couple more of these for clipping and stashing behind stuff. The no-cables thing is pretty cool.

I did find a post where a guy used washers and bolts to emulate the speedo attachment, might try that. And I do toss around the idea of buying a couple cheaper Bowens-mount monolights; Calumet TraveLights are plentiful used, for instance.

 

[David W. Jones]

Michael, I made something similar to this a few years back before I sold my bigger flash gear. I used a couple of extra brown line reflectors, and a harbor freight pop riveter to attach the insert and stand mount. I used a rubber automotive firewall type gasket product around the Canon strobe insert area to provide a snug fit, but ended up using epoxy to keep it in place, as it wanted to wander out of place.

 

[Michael Carter]

Yes, Brown Line and Black Line are the same mounts, as I understand anyway. Sometimes I keep an eye out for dead Brown heads, but the stuff just lasts forever. (When I tore up that head, the manufacture date was 4-1983 - and it was still fine, just looked beat to hell…)

The plywood and velcro strap was just great for this as far as keeping the flash on there.

I have plenty of reflectors, just want to be able to mount them the usual way - but I tried to buy the screws from Speedo a few years back but I don't think they sell "repair" parts. May try the washers & bolts thing sometime, the real Speedo hardware is tapered nylon which grabs on good since the flanges on the reflectors are sort of tapered.

I'll order one of those little diffusion cubes and ditch the tupperware though (it did work like a charm). I have a few 3' strip light softboxes that would work well with this, and I have a closet full of old flashes and an SB-60 to play with.

Guess I sound silly, but it was so, I dunno, liberating with no compromise… really a kickass addition to the big guns.