Last Updated on 07/03/2017 by Chris Gampat
All images by Jay Electro Blum. Used with permission.
We’ve interviewed photographer Jay ElectroBlum before on our website, and there’s no question that the party images he gets are incredibly unique. But recently, he shot photos at the Pride Parade here in NYC and decided to talk a bit more about the very crazy and unique rig that he uses.
Jay tells folks in the Fuji X Photography Facebook group:
“This is the rig that I use for nightlife and portraiture. I just fixed it up by tightening it with a pair of pliers…This is a YN 562. I’m going to use this on slave while I trigger the top. That’s the TN 564. And I have a knockdown filter on the 18mm f2 because it’s going to be bright outside.”
Jay has been using the Fujifilm X-T1 and considered switching to his Fujifilm X Pro 1 so that he can use the mechanical shutter release that he owns.
So let’s analyze this rig; Jay has:
- The camera: obviously
- The Lens: Duh!
- An ND filter: because he’s using flash to give off frontal illumination he needs to find a way to kill all the ambient light. High speed sync could do that at the expense of a lot of battery power. We’ve talked about how to do this previously.
- One flash up top
- On the top flash he has something sort of light a dual bladed light saber that goes on top to give off the look of something like a light strip
- On the bottom there is another flash
- On that flash there is a dome
- All of this is held into place using a bracket
When he fires the flash, the light comes from above and below to give the subject a very flattering look. Here are more images from Jay.
For more of Jay’s work, be sure to check out his Instagram page.