Profoto A2 and Merry
September 1st, 2022
I saw many reviews on the Profoto A2 strobe. This is a very portable strobe weighing less than 2 pound (1.7). I find this perfect for being able to carry around with me and use in outdoor portraits. The technical details for this strobe are here.
I paired the strobe with a light light stand and collapsible soft box called Clic 24” softbox. I like using a flash sometimes but the harshness of the light really doesn’t work for me even when I put the flash on lower power. For this reason the soft box is ideal. The only problem being that the soft box is hard to carry around if I break it down and reassemble. The Clic soft box solves this by being easy to close down and then open as needed. The technical details are here.
What attracted me to this strobe was the ability to no longer be tied to an AC outlet and its portability. The power of this flash is enough to provide supplemental light rather to overpower natural light. I enjoy natural light photographs (both portraits and nudes). Unfortunately it has often been a challenge to show the lady’s eyes in the way I wanted to do. My goal being to emphasize my subject but bring a pop of light to bring my photographs to the next level.
I did some experimenting with my cat Merry where I put the strobe on a lightweight light stand with the new soft box. He cooperated for quite a while as I setup the equipment and then took this series of pictures. Eventually he lost patience with me and took off.
I like the lovely quality of the light here. I used TTL after checking the light settings before I turned on the flash. The resulting power was very low and the brief flashes didn’t seem to bother him.
I had the camera on high speed around 12 frames per second 1/125 at F2.8. The flash completely kept up with my shooting with no problem at all. This make this flash perfect for what I have in mind. Much more shoots to come with this combination.
