redfishingboat

I’m very curious about the basics of photographic studio lighting. Strobist is God, as we all know. But, when he dropped the post a few weeks ago “A Walk Around the Monobloc, Pt. 1” I felt like he was holding back some of the fruit of knowledge. He told us about a monobloc, but I wanted to take a step back. What’s a monobloc? Are there different types of that sort of strobe? What about the “heads” I see on Craigslist all the time? How do they fit? I had a ton of questions I tried to get across in a comment on his blog, but I suffered a communication failure. I struggled to ask a good question.

Since then, I’ve wanted to research studio lights more, but I am really lazy didn’t know where to start. Happily, I just came across a post on Photo.net that hit the spot. It filled in all the starter gaps that I was missing from Strobie’s post.

Photo.net: An intro to studio lighting equipment

There’s a lot of great info here, but this is the bit I needed to know:

There are 2 basic types of studio flash -
Generator (England) also known as Pack & Head (USA) flash basically consists of a box that sits on the floor (or, with professional units too heavy to lift, sits on wheels) and
Monoblock (England) or Monolight (USA). Generator/Pack and head lights contain all their ‘works’ in the box, and a high-voltage cable connects the box to the actual flash head.

Got that? It’s easy, when you know the answer.

And, now please enjoy Metallica - “Hit the Lights”