Introduction
If you're a regular reader of this blog or you've read my Light It Up ebook (available in Dutch as Flash!), you know I'm an avid user of the softboxes of the South-Korean brand SMDV. One of the main reasons I like them so much is because they are super fast to set up and even faster to break down. As most of the stuff I do is location portraiture, often with non-professional models who have better things to do than sit around and wait while I set up a softbox, this is an important advantage.
My favorite softboxes so far in the SMDV range have been the Speedbox 70 and Speedbox Alpha 110. I manage to set up the Alpha 110 in less than 15 seconds. Breaking it down is even faster: 2 seconds. These softboxes are dodecagonal, which is a fancy word for being 12-sided. As such, they create an even more circular catchlight than regular octas.
The 110 is probably my absolute favorite: it's still light enough to carry around and I've used it everywhere from India to Mongolia. It just fits in my North Face Rolling Thunder 36 bag, without having to disassemble it. With smaller speedlights, I sometimes use the 70 as well. Apart from the quick setup and breakdown, what I also love is the build quality and the fact that I can add grids to the softboxes. As my style of portraiture is pretty dark and moody, I like the extra control that a grid can bring. Below you can see a setup shot where I use the 110 and the 70 together in this impromptu street portrait of a lawyer-turned-sadhu in India. This portrait was made during the first Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass. Details of the 2019 edition can be found here.
The grid helps to control the rim light and to avoid flare in my lens.
Fujifilm X-Pro2 | XF50-140mmF2.8 R LM OIS WR @ 129.2 mm | 1-250 sec. @ f/8 | ISO 400 | This one was done with my Jinbei HD600 flash - I'm using Godox AD600 and 200 flashes now. | Camera left: SMDV Alpha 110 - Camera right: Gridded SMDV 70.
This is Matt Brandon's SMDV Alpha 90 being used to make a portrait of these Mongolian Eagle Hunters... It took two people just to hold the 90 so the 180 would not have been an option here...
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 56.5 mm | 1-125 sec. @ f/13 | ISO 100 | SMDV Alpha 90 with Godox AD600B
The SMDV Mega Speedbox series
However, sometimes, I want an even bigger light source, so when SMDV announced the Mega Series of softboxes and more specifically the Mega 180, I was all ears and eyes. They were kind enough to send me a review copy and so I took it out for a spin in the city of Ghent, Belgium where I live.
The Mega series consists of five softboxes, ranging in size from 90 cm to 180 cm. The three smallest (90, 110 and 130 are deep octa style softboxes, except for the fact that they're not eight-sided but 24-sided! The two biggest ones, the 160 and the 180 have a more regular width-to-depth ratio. Weights range from 2.1 to 3.24 kg.
Now mind you, this is one big softbox. In fact, it's taller than most of the people I shoot. So, although it's probably a softbox that most photographers would use indoors, I wanted to see how I fared with it outdoors, as this is my natural habitat.
Construction and setup
It's actually 181 cm, but who's counting :-) Image © Frank Verheyen.
When you take it out of its bag, this softbox just oozes quality and sturdiness. SMDV managed to maintain a quick setup system but they improved and reinforced it, which was necessary because of the additional strain a softbox this size puts on the entire folding mechanism. Furthermore, as this softbox has no less than 24 sides, setup takes a little longer than the SMDV Alpha 110 but it's still doable in less than a minute, as you can see from the video. The first couple of times you set it up, it can feel a bit tight but that improves a lot: after the tenth time I set it up, I could do it in under a minute. One thing that helps is to not secure every rod in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, but to secure every other one and then give it a second pass with the ones you left out on the first go. That same trick also works on the Alpha 110, by the way.
24 sides means there's also 24 rods to click into place. Still, after some practice, I manage to do it in under a minute! Breaking down is even faster. Image © Frank Verheyen.
In one way, I like the new setup even system better than the old one on the small and Alpha SMDV speedboxes. On those units, one thing you have to watch out for is dust or sand getting inside the speedring. The new setup system of the Mega series is all external, so there's no risk of sand or other dirt getting inside and blocking the setup system. I've once had to open the speedring of my Speedbox 70 and the inside is almost as complex as a Swiss watch :-). It's a great system - I just wouldn't do any beach shots with it...
Another difference between the Mega series and the regular SMDV softboxes lies in how you break them down. The latter are broken down by depressing a couple of switch-like buttons, which is as fast as it gets. With the Mega series, however, you have to flip each of the 24 switches individually. Again, it's something that can be done in 30 seconds or so. So it's still very fast for a softbox this size (and with this many sides), just not as fast as its smaller siblings.
On my regular SMDV softboxes, I generally leave the middle diffuser and the front diffuser (and sometimes even the grid) attached when I break them up. While you could do so on the Mega series, especially on the 180 I think it's probably just as fast to take at least the front diffuser off when taking it down because leaving it on adds some extra tension when you tighten the rods to put it back together. This is one huge softbox, after all!
In the video below, I show you how easy it is to set up the softbox. In fact, putting on the front diffuser takes longer than setting up the actual softbox.
That's it for the first part of blog post. In the next part, we'll actually put the SMDV, our model and our assistants to work and make some images!
Fujifilm GFX 50S | GF32-64mmF4 R LM WR @ 33.8 mm | 1-125 sec at f - 8,0 | ISO 100 | 2 x Godox AD600B with H1200B head in SMDV Mega 180 Speedbox.
