Last Updated on 11/26/2017 by Chris Gampat
The new Isolite is promising to change the game in how flash photography has been done for years
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa…” That’s essentially what I said when I first heard about the Isolite as I didn’t totally understand how it worked. But the new Kickstarter known as the Isolite is essentially an on-camera flash modifier designed to let you fire off strobes in a photo and then choose to add them later or not. How you ask? How can you add a flash or its output after an image is shot? And how does that really change the game for photo creation?
According to the company’s Kickstarter page, here’s how you use it:
- Turn real lights on and off after the capture has been made.
- Push, Pull, Paint light after the capture has been made.
- Hard and soft light in one capture.
- Adjust the exposure and ratio of each light source after the capture has been made.
- With selective masking of each light source, difficult or impossible lighting control can be done with ease.
- Light can be animated after capture turning still image captures into full motion video.
- Using our proprietary tools, online images can be brought to life with light
Pretty crazy, right? I’m not totally sure how I feel about it as I personally use flash as a creative tool for lighting and typically have a creative vision involving the use of that light. But this can do the same thing, sort of. It just also makes it easier for you to work with it.
Here’s Isolite’s press release.
A Canadian startup has invented a photographic tool that will change the way photographers think about and use light. The ability to ne tune the brightness and contrast of photos with digital editing tools has been standard practice for decades. Isolite takes the control of light one step further. Images captured with Isolite allow you to turn real lights on and o inside a picture after it has been taken.
The ability to control real lights inside a photograph will give novice photographers the con dence to easily learn new lighting techniques, and experts the power to re ne subtle highlights and shadows in ways never before possible.
Isolite uses a system of patent-pending hardware that attach to either speedlites or studio strobes and work much like any other light modi er when shooting. One device, called the Dualite, gives you two kinds of light in one shot from a single speedlight.Once an image has been captured, the le can be previewed with popular Raw software or converted with Isolite’s Raw imaging tools, which allow users to select between or adjust exposure of each light source and output it as a new, re-lit Raw le or layered Ti . With Isolite’s work ow photographers can re-light and repurpose images for clients or create dynamic animations and interactions to engage followers.
“Photographic technology has changed signi cantly in recent years but we still light photos much the way they did in the 1950s,” says the inventor Christopher Gergley. “Our technology takes advantage of the surplus sensitivity in today’s cameras and the abundance of inexpensive but powerful ashes that many photographers already own, by adding a new kind of device that enhances control and o ers new ways to create with light.”
The rst version of Isolite is optimized for black-and-white photography and is currently being o ered through a new Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising $75,000 CAD. Campaign backers will be the rst to use this innovative system, with their funds helping to bring Isolite technology out of the lab and into the hands of everyday photographers.