Just returned from a family vacation to the florida keys, nice after being on the road for more than a month. I promised myself I wouldn’t turn this family vacation into a ‘family stock shoot’, and I’m happy to say that was the case. That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend some time doing a little shooting. I brought the Elinchrom Quadra with me (why not, I put this little thing in my shoulder bag with head and cords, room to spare…it is just to easy to carry this pack everywhere you go). I wanted to shoot an image of my son playing in the surf, which he did for 7 days straight. Nothing like a little sand, salt, 100 percent humidity and flying water to give your camera gear a work out.
I kept the Quadra in my Lowepro shoulder bag, which got fairly soaked during the process. My wife volunteered to be grip, and we all waded out into the surf to get hammered. As with fresh water, as long as you cover up your flash gear, you can do a lot in the water with no adverse effects on gear. What’s more, we had this pack and heads out in the 95 degree salty humid heat for 7 days with no problems. The skyport is critical for this ‘enclosed pack shooting’, since you can control the output from your skyport on the camera, and not have to open the bag to access the pack and potentially get it wet. Tech; Nikon D200, 18-135mm lens, ISO 100, F11 at 1/250. Elinchrom Quadra shot at around 300 watts through a 27″ square Rotalux softbox.