Mini Speedlight Octabox and more Sony RX1 thoughts

I happened to be speaking with Tom Shaw, a rather excellent Getty shooter, and we got onto the subject of remote flash. I mentioned I was looking to pick up a smallish softbox and he suggested I try Damian McGillicuddy's 48cm "Classic Beauty Dish". Tom had a couple in his bag, saying that he never travels without them.A quick look revealed a little black nylon package approx the length & width of an A4 sheet of paper (though obviously thicker!!) containing a flash bracket, circular mounting thingy, a bunch of spokes, and associated silvery and white material. Tom assembled it all and what he created turned out to be a small octagonal softbox (or octabox for short) with internal baffling, removable diffuser and flash holder all beautifully made. I had to get myself one of these. I'm not a fan of square/rectangular softboxes and much prefer a rounder octabox for the shape of the catchlight in the eye and generally because they look cooler.So that was me £186 poorer, and the package arrived a few days later. OK, so it's a bit on the fiddly side to put together and take apart as you have to insert the spokes or rods that support the shape first into the pockets in the outer reflector, and then into the central hub. They need a good bit of bending to locate them properly, but when assembled it's a really sturdy bit of kit. Also I had to put a spacer block on the flash mount as even on the shortest setting my 580EXII would not reach up into the central hole at the back of the box.Next thing - out to put it to the test with my friendly dancers back at the abandoned Ewhurst brickworks. I didn't do any "typical" portrait pictures, but as you can see from the first shot the octabox produces a very nice, even light especially when held very close. I didn't want to use an umbrella in this situation as it would spill light everywhere, so the more controlled & directional light from the octabox was ideal. The octabox is obviously camera right about 45 degrees, and there's a blue gelled flash out of shot far right bouncing into the silver graffiti near the camera to make it look a bit more sparky and interesting. With a slightly underexposed ambient exposure the octabox brings some nice soft light onto Vicky which drops off to keep the attention on her face.Here's another shot which is a bit calmer and more natural with the Vicky looking straight into the octabox. It doesn't look overlit which I like, but if you saw the same shot without any light it would be very plain and dull in comparison (of course I don't have an unlit one to show you - must remember next time).Being contemporary dancers they wanted to do more than stand against a wall, so we thought what better than to put one of them into a large rusty tube with sharp edges.I'm sure you've figured out that the octabox has mysteriously vanished from this shot which previously looked like this:As you can see, the octabox is quite compact, and just the right size to light an individual person. The light is nicely contained and doesn't splurge out all over the place. There's a rim light coming from a bare flash away off camera on the left as well. The camera was locked down on a tripod so just needed a shot without the light stand there, and then the one with it, and some masking of the two overlaid images in Photoshop to remove the light from the picture.Probably the best thing about it is that it packs up small, doesn't weigh much and can be chucked in a bag very easily without sacrificing lots of space. One of these and a second flash as a back or rim light and you could handle lots of situations with ease.So, onto the little Sony RX1. The image quality from this camera never ceases to amaze me. Steve Huff, that pariah of all people with gear acquisition syndrome, has a very nice comparison of the new Leica M240 with the RX1 and Fuji X100S up on his site. It's worth downloading the pics he has there to see how they stack up against each other. In my book, a win for the RX1, up to the point where you need a different focal length of course. The Leica M240 is tugging at me again but after seeing the comparison and developing a Lightroom preset add a bit of contrast & saturation to the RX1 files to match the M240 images I think I'll manage to stave off the demons for a bit longer.I tried out the external electronic viewfinder for the RX1 the other day. It's a very nice piece of kit but I didn't splash out on it (£345 was the cheapest I could get). This is primarily because it sits on the hotshoe thereby completely buggering up the possibility of using a Pocket Wizard to trigger an external flash. I haven't found any other flash connectivity on the RX1 other than using the onboard flash as an optical trigger. However, the EVF is very cool and it does make the camera a bit more "natural" to use (though lots of youngsters who try one of my Canon 1D hold it away from their face like a point & shoot and wonder why the rear screen isn't working - I wonder if they find the standard RX1 more "natural" without the EVF). I reckon I'll pick one up in the coming weeks as it will be good for everything that doesn't need remote flash, particularly events where one doesn't want to draw attention to oneself by holding a camera with glaring screen out in front of you.For any of my photography that needs 35mm, the RX1 is my go-to camera. It completely destroys a Canon 1DIV with a 24 1.4L on it (31mm effective focal length) in both sharpness and image quality. Now all I want is a 50mm RX1 and a 75mm RX1 and I'll be very happy.Lastly to finish off, here's another dance shot with no dancing at all in it.And to give all my secrets away...Vicky as VAL, the voice activated lightstand: