Something that’s been on my list for a while now is to shoot portraits with an improvised “Strobist” style setup.

Tuesday I was in the Rotterdam area so I paid a visit to kamera-express. They did have umbrellas for a good price but to mount that on a tripod all they had was an expensive piece of manfrotto kit (the 026 lite tilt umbrealla adapter). So, I asked around and Camex in Amsterdam had a much cheaper Hama adapter (part nummer 6079).

Picked it up this morning. An SB-600 I already had and an old tripod which will do untill I can get a lightstand.

Mounted together it looks like this:

So I decided to give it a try. SInce I’m shooting a nikon D300 with a SB-600 I don’t need to use cactus triggers but can rely on Nikon’s CLS

With the first dozen of shots I found these two:

Now, I’m quite pleased with these. Not because they’re exceptional quality but because these were shot with no experience with a setup like this, with no special preparation except for getting my lighting equipment out. This was shot in my living room with nothing special, not even a backdrop.