Well, I'll Be Darned...With Optex

" Well, I'll be darned " is the Canadian expression of a thousand uses. Whether you have just opened your house trailer door to a brown bear, put your foot through your canoe, or watched the Canadian federal elections, you can gain valuable moments to think by uttering it. Sort of a verbal plug to fill up intellectual holes. It is also a term of admiration...in this case I am going to apply it to the Optex Photo Studio And Lighting Kit. It really does do what it says it can do...and you might be just the person who needs one. Basically, it is a small product illustration studio in a box. You've seen that claim before with some complex little offerings from various makers...and if you haven't, go google some. But this one is actually successful right out of the gate. Open the box, take out the folded white, black, and peach backdrop sheets and put them aside. Put the thing on the floor and unzip the front flaps. Pull the two wire U-shaped hoops into position and watch the box take shape. Then attach the LED light bars to the metal rails on top with the magnets, connect them to the power adapter, and plug in. Presto, light bouncing about a large cube. Put in your backdrop sheets and add a diffuser sheet up above and you are set. Put your stuff into the set, put your camera on a tripod and shoot away. This has got to be the fastest product set in history...and if you need to go where the products are instead of bringing them to you, it is the most sophisticated answer. This illustration has a certain M.C. Escher feel to it - a set being illustrated in a set - but the idea is that the light inside it is pretty much what you would expect from a set of studio strobes - at least as far as colour temperature goes. I run my Fujifilm X-T2 at 5600º Kelvin and these LED bars seem pretty close to that. There's a top flap so you can do overhead shots. There's a front flap to reflect some light back onto the subject. The result is good enough to shoot selling images, and if you add some side lights or the diffuser - I did not unfold it - you get even evener light. Eventually... And here's the best part - Unlike the bear, canoe, or federal elections, it all comes good in the end. The thing actually folds up successfully and goes back in the box. Try doing that with Ottawa... Note: Peach backdrop. Might go good in the Okanogan, but otherwise...