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Better Digital Camera #3 5
21
MontalbettiCampbell
Nick Rains takes his camera behind the scenes of our cover shoot.
Looking out o the plane window
as we came in to land, all I could
see was rain lashing down and
heavy clouds draped over the city.
Welcome to Sydney in June.
I was ying down rom sunny Brisbane
to meet up with Denis Montalbetti and
Gay Campbell who would be shooting an
image or this magazine’s cover, and using
some high end studio ash which Denis
wanted to test out.
Ater being dropped o by cab atthe wrong end o the industrial estate,
and having to trudge through the rain
to fnd B2 Studio, I was wondering
what I had let mysel in or. Ater all,
Montalbetti and Campbell are legends in
the industry, known or their uncompromising approach
and wonderul sense o style, and here I was stomping
through the rain to spend a whole day in the studio with
them, watching them create something special or my
cover.
I was directed to Studio 4, and stepped into a vast
space o white to see Denis and the crew setting up aairly complex lighting rig at the ar end. There was a
controlled sense o purpose right rom the beginning
– Lauren, our model or the day, was having her hair
done, Denis was measuring light levels and adjusting the
strobe positions – it all seemed very calm and organised,
and that’s the way it went or the rest o the day.
Thinking back to my days shooting commercial
work in Sydney back in the 90s, I was rather expecting
rantic rushing around, mad panics and a general mood
o mayhem. But no, apart rom the model’s latex pants
being too big (baggy latex is an odd look!) and Gay
having to rush o to fnd new ones, everything went
swimmingly well.
ConceptIt all started when I
approached Denis to be eatured in Better Digital Camera;
my idea was to eature him in the What’s in the Bag
section but Denis mentioned that he was interested
in comparing the two top studio ash systems’ high
speed ash durations. This sounded like a great idea andit gradually escalated into Denis and Gay shooting an
&
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22 Montalbetti & Campbell
image or their book that I could use or my cover – rom
my point o view this was quite a coup.
Between us we managed to bring together all the
people we needed to get the look Denis and Gay had
in mind. Sun Studios agreed to provide us with their top
Broncolor Scoro packs, L&P sent over their equivalent
Prooto Air packs and we cut a deal with B2 Studios asa neutral venue which had enough ceiling height or a
ull trampoline. Denis wanted to see i the claimed ash
durations o 1/4000th o a second were realistic and to
see i he could totally reeze a bouncing fgure – hence
the trampoline and the big studio. On top o all that we
decided to use the best possible capture device and
Bruce Pottinger rom L&P brought over a pre-release
Phase One camera with the latest P65 back.
LightingDenis set up a airly simple lighting arrangement. Two
heads running rom a single pack were placed behind
icelite screens to illuminate the white background and
allow it to blow out to almost pure white.
One head was put in a big Octa light shaper on a
ull height boom to act as a key and another head went
into a low strip light to act as a fll and even out the light
allo rom the key light. Since the model would be
wearing a shiny black outft it was important to control
the contrast between pale skin and black costume.
Throughout the day both the Broncolor and the
Prooto ash systems perormed admirably – Denis does
not give his strobes an easy time, he expects them to
work when he needs them to work and they did this
without a single glitch, hour ater hour, shot ater shot.
The claimed ash duration o 1/4000th was hard to
confrm. We had a ash meter that measured duration as
well as light level but unortunately it was the only bit o gear that let us down that day. It showed the Broncolors
running at 1/3200th when they were set to 1/4000th but
we could not repeat this check with the Prootos later on.
Based on the published data the Broncolor Scoro
packs peak at 1/12,000, just like the Prooto Air, and at the
power settings we were using (to get F11), both were in
act indistinguishable. I we had gone down to F5.6 the
Prootos would have been running at a shorter duration
than the Scoros but given that the 1/4000 setting we
were using roze the motion anyway, we would not have
been able to tell the dierence.
Again, based on the published data, the Prootos can outperorm the Scoros – at max power the Scoros run
at 1/240th as compared to the Airs at 1/1600th. Also, the
minimum duration or the Prootos is not at minimum
power as you would expect, but at about 1/16th -1/8th
power. The Scoros ollow a more usual pattern o reducing
power to get a shorter duration throughout the whole
range.
CameraDenis has never shot with a Phase One back beore and
at frst was a bit concerned about his lack o amiliarity
with the equipment. He was pleasantly surprised to fnd
that the our big buttons on the P65+ are simple and
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Better Digital Camera #3 5
23
obvious to use. “I like it, it just works” was his verdict ater
just a ew minutes exploring the menus.
We ran a Firewire 400-800 lead rom the tripod
mounted Phase One camera to an 8-Core MacPro
running Capture One sotware so all the images would
be previewed on a good, colour calibrated monitor –essential or checking ocus and exposure.
Once we started shooting Denis was immediately
impressed with the quality o the captures. During
ocus checks we would crowd around the monitor
and when the image was displayed at 100% on
the screen, we were all stunned to see how the
combination o high resolution and lack o an anti-alias
flter could render even fne gauzy material with such
great fdelity.
ShootingOnce we got all the costumes and makeup sorted out,and Denis was happy with the lighting, our model,
Lauren, hopped up onto the trampoline and, under Gay’s
direction, spent the next ew hours bouncing up into
the air whilst holding a pose. She was a total trooper, not
once complaining until, as the aternoon wore on, she
fnally had to answer ‘the call o nature’ made increasingly
persistent rom all that jumping.
Denis shot almost 20GB o images, each one being
around 60MB as a RAW fle and 180MB as an 8bit TIFF.
Finished ResultsGay took the fnal images and superimposed the fgure
onto a background o roses – as you can see on the
Denis Montalbetti & Gay Campbell
www.montalbetticampbell.com
Studio Assistant: Alex Porter
Studio: B2 Studio, Alexandria,
Sydney
www.b2.net.au
Talent: Lauren Burnett rom
Vivian’s Model Management
www.viviansmodels.com.au
Hair: Clive Allright / Work Agency
Hair Assistant: Jayde Allright
www.workagency.com.au
Styling: Cassandra Scott-Finn
www.cassandrascottfnn.com
Makeup : Martin Bray/
Look Production
Makeup Assistant: Jenna
www.martinbray.com
Broncolor Flash: Sun Studios
www.sunstudiosaustralia.com
Prooto Flash: L&P Photographic
Phase One Cameras : L&P
Photographic
www.lapoto.com.au
Latex Costume: www.rubber.
com.au
Top Hat : www.houseopriscilla.
com.au
Retouching: CREAM Studios
www.creamstudios.com.au
Production Stills were shot by Nick Rains on a Canon 5D MKII
using 17-40, 85 and 24TSE Canon lenses. All images were shot by
available light at 3200ISO.
You can see a short video o this shoot here:www.betterdigitalonline.com/blog
Denis Montalbetti
cover. The image eatured prominently at the PMA Show
in Sydney on the Fujiflm stand where it was displayed
along with other Montalbetti and Campbell images as a
series o 2.4m high prints on Fujiex.
Better Digital Camera Magazine would like to thank the ollowing people or making the day such a success:
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24 Montalbetti & Campbell
Flash Pack ShootoutI was expecting to see some signifcant dierences
between these two high-end systems, but as the
preceding article suggests, there is very little to choose
between them.
Both cost about the same to rent, and on paper the
Broncolor Scoro claims 3200J against the Prooto Pro-8A’s
2400J. From shooting both it seems that this 1/2 stopdierence is not readily apparent.
The Scoro recharges a tiny bit aster – 0.8 sec vs
0.9sec which is negligible really.
Both can take a ull commercial workload, continuing
to pump out ull power discharges hour ater hour.
Denis Montalbetti thought that the light quality rom
the Prooto was superior; certainly it was slightly more
wrap-around, but the heads did not have the exact same
diusers over the tubes which might account or this.
The Scoro has an interesting eature allowing a
head to be plugged into more than one power pack
or a ‘ping-pong’ discharge o theoretically 4 rames per
second on ull power i you ran it o 4 packs. Wow.
I it’s short ash duration that you need, then the
Prooto has the edge. At ull power it’s 1/1600, as
opposed to 1/240th or the Scoro and at about 4-stops
down rom max power, the Prooto is still up around the
1/12000 mark whilst the Scoro only achieves this at its
lowest power settings.I’d call this a dead heat, both are excellent proessional
outfts that will do the job reliably and with no uss. Buy
either one and you will be completely satisfed.
Broncolor :
www.sunstudiosaustralia.com
(02) 9641 5555
Profoto :
www.lapfoto.com.au
(02) 9906 2733
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studio 01
Australias rst completely integrated
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alexandria
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