Stabilizing Large Soft Box

I picked up a Calumet Nova 72 softbox, not quite realizing that it is larger than my refrigerator. A couple of newbie questions.

• Any tricks to getting it on the strobe? I have a Calumet Travelite 750. I attach the softbox to the speedring but then wrestling the speedring over the modeling lamp and flash bulb seems more precarious than it should be.

• Any tricks to removing the large softbox from the speedring? I was not happy dancing around my dirty garage floor trying to remove it. The best I could do was remove the baffle and outer liner, place the softbox face down, and then push to straighten out the rods so they could be removed from the speedring holes.

• How do you secure the strobe with the heavy soft box? No matter how tightly I fastened the strobe to its bracket, the weight of the softbox was too much torque and the strobe gradually pointed to the floor. I solved it inelegantly by hanging a heavy chain from the back handle to counterbalance the weight. But a better way must exist.

• 
  For still lifes, how can you use such a large soft box on top of the object pointing down? When I look at the specs on booms they don't support much weight.

Are you using a counterbalanced boom or a counterweight (such as http://www.calumetphoto.com/item/BG4238/)?

mgb74 said:

Are you using a counterbalanced boom or a counterweight (such as http://www.calumetphoto.com/item/BG4238/)?

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No, I am not.

I am just putting the strobe on a light stand. I have never used a boom, but if I used a boom, would not the strobe be placed on the end of the boom in the same manner that it is placed on a regular light stand? The forward weight of the large soft box would still torque the handle on the strobe. I used the heavy chain as a counterweight looped through the handle on the back of the strobe to hold things steady.

May I ask what the weight of it is?

fotch said:

May I ask what the weight of it is?

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Hard to say for sure, but probably 6-7 pounds.

If you can't tighten the bracket enough then see if you might be missing a washer in the bracket. You may want to add a nylon or rubber washer that has some "bite". I had this issue with a used monolight a while back.

Alternatively, you may have a larger/heavier softbox than the unit can handle. But if the flash is 6-7 lbs I wouldn't think so (unless it's one of the really big ones).

The way to get it on/off the flash head is to put the softbox on the floor, face down, after you have it on the speed ring. Then lower the flash head into the speed ring. While I don't have a softbox THAT big, my big one (30x40 or thereabouts) is not beyond the ability of the bracket to cope with. You just have to have two hands involved when adjusting the angle. Then again, with a softbox as big as yours, I can't imagine you'd have a need to adjust the angle.

As to adjusting a boom, you just need a beefier boom. Manfrotto has a counterweighted boom arm which has geared adjustments that should handle it. If not, there are some Matthews or Avenger booms that are rigid that could probably handle the weight. If you're doing tabletop still life photos, I'd suggest getting a smaller softbox, because you're wasting a lot of your light if you use that big a softbox to light a relatively small set.

Look carefully at the outer edges of the softbox, along where the rods go. Quite a few that I have seen often have a fabric loop along this edge, to allow you to rig a suspension system to hang the softbox, or attache supplimentary supports. Ones as big as you have often are used with two heads in them. In this case a support bracket that ties the assembled affair to a sturdy stand is attached to the bolted together speed rings, and the flash heads (at least with head and pack systems) are supported only by their attachement to the speed rings.

Mr. TheFlyingCamera is right. Lay the softbox on the floor, attach the monolight, and then mount the light on a stand. Check with Calumet as to why the head isn't holding.

For flying a head with a small softbox over a small set, we often use a Matthews mini boom arm on a c-stand, with a small sand bag on the end of the boom to counterbalance the weight, and a large sand bag on the longest leg of the C-stand. The first couple of pictures at http://sacramento.craigslist.org/pho/1334088906.html are a c-stand with a mini-boom.

For flying a really big soft box, a wheeled boom stand is what you want, at least on a flat surface. These have cranks on the end of the arm to position the head. Make sure to mount the head such that the mounting screw mates to one of the flat side of the mounting post. Also, be sure to tie a safety line that attached to the head around the boom arm, such that if the head were to fall off, the line would keep it from falling. Something like http://www.filmtools.com/msejustdori3.html as a base, with http://www.filmtools.com/bomasubowwe.html as the boom arm.

These big softboxes will act as sails in a wind.