Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

How about some suggestions for a 18" x 18" economical softbox with grid for the Einstein?

I see Joel Grimes use something like these for his 2 rim lights in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3q4v8txoq4.

That would be great. I'd prob take two for sports work.

They look like Lastolite EZYBoxes.

Joel used to use alien bees stripboxes for rim lighting....I'd think they'd be more useful than these smaller ezyboxes for rim lighting...

I was trying to decide between the EZYBox by Lasolite and the Westcott Mini Apollo. That's when I stumbled upon the Cheetah QBox 24 while reading some forums: http://www.cheetahstand.com/servlet/the ... -24/Detail

The reason why I went with the Cheetah is well as you know, the EZYBox is very expensive for what you are getting, and the Appollo was a little too small for my tastes at 16" by 16". The Cheetah is 24" by 24" plus it comes with a grid and round mask all for under $120.

I purchased mine with the shoe-mount bracket, but they also have a bracket for the AlienBees($18) which I'm about to purchase pretty soon. I think that for color accuracy the Westcott Mini Apollo would be your best bet. I found the Cheetah a little warm, but I was able to compensate by turning down the color temparature on my camera by a couple of notches. After doing that, the light is absolutely great ! Almost like a spotlight, but much, much softer.

**correction ** Oops I forgot you wanted something for your Einsteins not ABs.

IIRC, you can hack the cheetah-like boxes by getting an SP Studios speedring and stuffing it where their speedring mount goes. It's a fairly loose place to stuff it so it should work. I've never tried it though...

Unless it is a ridgid bracket that can only accept AB housing demesnions, if it works for the Bees faceplate, it should work for Einstein.

For what it is worth, we have found some UV flourescence from the Westcott Parabolic Umbrellas (white shoot through). I don't know how this permeates through the remainder of thier products, but simply being Westcott does not mean color correct.

Though any diffuser will change color temperture some, so no fabric will be "correct", but some are better than others.

FWIW, I've been disappointed in the build quality of my Apollo brolly box. The first one arrived new in the box with the corner stitching torn so that one of the rods poked out the first time it was opened. B&H replaced it no prob but now after about 6 months of VERY light use one of the zippers is coming un-stitched. I'd be surprised if the Mini Apollo's were any better.

Essentially all fabric based modifiers have to be made in China to be anywhere near affordable. The sewing problems described are standard across almost all product lines. The only alternative is to pay five times as much for USA quality, but there is no sewing/fabric industry left in US.

High end Euro brands are more and more also made in China or India for the same reasons.

Many brands don't even look at color control, fluorescence, etc . . . we do. If you buy 10 white umbrellas from, say, a B&H, 9 of them will probably raise color temperature by 1000° from fluorescence.

So true. I live between the "Collar City" (Troy, NY) and "Glove City" (Gloversville, NY), neither of which produce much of their namesake anymore.

I have to say, the quality of my PLM's seems much better than my Apollo.