The videos showing my prototypes of lightweight lightstands have some 60 000 views on YouTube now, and appear on sites like Wired, Strobist and Fotosidan – fun to see the idea gaining some traction :-) People wants to buy them, but I'll respond with the four-letter-word "DIY!". Here's some links to articles:
OK, it's small and simple, but I'm still quite proud; our prints and files can be found at our web-store now.
It all started a couple weeks ago, when a photographer wanted to buy prints from me; three different 13 x 19" archival quality prints of the Gripen jet fighter, to be hung in his living room. A possible reason could be that you might not want to look at your own work at home, or maybe that it's more of an inspiration if you look at something you don't know exactly everything about. Anyhow, I'm all so proud this happened.
So, here's the store; sharing the work is what makes being a photographer so much fun, and maybe more people could find some value in these images. Starting out small, there's 120 fine art prints and 40 image files to choose from; more to come.
Prints are manually made with the same printers, papers and quality as our portfolio, exhibitions and client deliveries. I sign them on the reverse side, and delivers them worldwide. Image files are OK for commercial use, and comes with publishing rights for one project and client during five years, in all medias.
Any ideas to make things better, questions, or any other stuff; just let me know!
Our portfolio can now be viewed in higher resolution – in addition to the normal view mode, there's now again possible to use large slideshows – a bug in a plugin forced me to take these down a while ago.
The slideshows are somewhat tweaked since the last time, adjusted for a little more room on a normal 1600x1200 or 1920x1200 monitor. If you've got a smaller screen, like the iMac 21" 1920x1080, they can just barely be viewed, but it's really meant for larger screens – on small screens, use the normal view mode instead.
The view mode PDF for prints are still there, for horizontal A4 papers.
All view modes are free of Flash, and works with an iPhone and the coming iPad; it's even possible to flick between images with your finger in the large slideshow view mode.
Custom wallpaper manufacturer Mr Perswall in Sweden have one of my images of Gripen in their collection, and it's now in place #2 in the top-30 ordered wallpapers. Mean!
And a little puzzling, considering it's above the usual suspects like the Eiffel tower, stones in water, American skyscrapers, yellow cabs, and the ever-classic birch forest :-)
Many of you've asked for a follow-up video showing the construction of these, so here's how. The only needed skills are to cut rope and tie knots; easy peasy. I've caught a flu, sorry for sounding nasal and slow. No fat cat this time either, but more closeups and image examples. There's more of those (images that is, not cats) at our website; almost all strobe pictures uses the very same softboxes.
The light weight (0.4 kg), fast setup/teardown and compact packing (40 cm), does come with some caveats, however. First, these tripods won't allow the box to be tilted; a minus compared to regular lightstands, but the boxes I use are so soft, I personally don't find it much use to tilt them; always using them straight on, even with normal stands. Might not fit your work though.
Second, the light weight and cord spreaders at the bottom make them less good in wind. I've made a version with rigid spreaders that will cope better, and you could easily add loops for tent pegs at the bottom, but I'd still prefer a regular tripod with ballast outside.
The good thing though is speed, size and weight, which is important for me since I use many small flashes, building larger clusters of small units; a modular approach that gives more flexibility, channels, and if you want, really large and soft light, or quite complex setups. The leg construction also makes it easy to place many stands close to each other; a problem with normal stands. The basics can be found in the first video/blog post.
For me, these lightstands are the perfect fit for small battery flashes; I use 7 units of the Canon 580EX, together with 5 of these lightstands. Flash, box and stand can stay connected during transport for über-quick setup, with the combined package being about the same size as *one* normal stand. No problem fitting 5 flashes/boxes/stands plus camera gear *inside* one large backpack. Try that with studio cans on Manfrottos :-)
Our website svarteld.com just got it's portfolio updated, plus some other tweaks. The website was previoulsy launched with a small number of temporary images, but this time around it contains some 230 pictures, spanning the 10 years I've been in business.
Want to view the images on paper? A view mode called PDF for prints, gives you a PDF in landscape A4 size instead. Loading takes some time here because of the resolution.
The normal view mode is still present, of course. Color profiles are used; if you want color consistency use Safari, especially if you have a wide-gamut screen. Firefox does not always handle this properly with color management turned on (or off).
Just want to let you know I'm away snowboarding in the Alps this week, back 1 February, and will then make a detailed video about how the light, light, lightstands are made (really simple).
Being a long-time reader of David's huge Strobist community, discussing not-so-huge flashes, I'm really stoked he wrote about me... err, my light, light lightstands. Read it on Strobist here.
I've made five of them now, one of them being a little different. I've put all of them into my everyday commercial work, doing fine. More info regarding those three-legged babies of mine soon here.
A lightstand that weighs 0.4 kg, measures 40 cm packed, and 2 m unfolded. Huh?
The limiting factor for me when setting up many lights, is often how much weight and volume I can bring. This is one of the reasons I use small flashes in large quantity, instead of few large ones. With many small flashes I get more control over the light, being able to use more channels/heads. With cameras getting better and better in low light, loads of effect is often not that necessary anymore. If I still need lots of Ws, I'll bring many small ones together in a large cluster instead; enough to use in bright sun to battle the ambient.
Since I've made the switch from big studio cans, I've minimized weight and volume quite a bit, not just by flashes, but also softboxes and lightstands; Manfrottos smaller Stacker stands are great if you need many of them. But they're still the bulkiest part of the kit, and now I've constructed some really light ones myself, that's about one-third the weight of a normal small lighweight lightstand. They use materials from tent construction; actually the same stuff that many softboxes are built from, and similar to Tamrac's brand new Zipshot tripods; I've got a pair of those too, but need something taller and stronger.
A normal lightstand might weigh 2 kg, a small Stacker stand about 1.3 kg, and my homegrown ones offers the same height at 0.4 kg, and don't need any additional fasteners for attaching the softbox. Quick to set up and tear down. This means I'll be able to bring more flashes and stands to future jobs.
This video is a little special, being vertical; just like lightstands. The rattling sound comes from the cat messing with the camera :-)
Hey folks, I'm Peter Karlsson, living and working in Sweden as a commercial photographer and graphic designer. I'm one of two persons at Svarteld form & foto.
