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Mario Bullard photo
1 Level
747 Review
47 Karma

Review on πŸ’‘ Conical Snoot Bowens Mount Studio Lighting Accessory for LED Continuous and Strobe Light - Bowens Mount Photographic Equipment Accessories (Lens Not Included) by Mario Bullard

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Affordable, manageable, but has problems.

I bought this optical attachment from Wellmaking and an extra set of gobos. There will be several problems, none of which are insurmountable, just annoying. First, gobo cucoloris are round while the holder is square or rectangular. This limits how far you can rotate them to position them correctly against the background before the holder pops out of the clip. The holder is held in place by three spring-loaded washers that sit on three posts that separate the lens mount from the rest of the snood. Remove the holder and rotate the gobo itself, then reinsert the holder into the modifier. Better bring a pair of work gloves as it will be hot. I'm using one of my backup flashes for this mod, an Elinchrom RX-4 D-Lite with an Elinchrom to Bowens mount adapter. The modeling light on it is barely bright enough to see the position of the gobo shape under normal shooting conditions. You may need to dim the lights until the gobos are in place. It works best with an f/1.4 lens. The f/3.5 lens is very dark. I shoot with Nikon so instead of a Canon lens I bought a Canon EF camera with a Nikon F lens mount, which works well. I did notice some vignetting around the edges of the gobo shape, but this may be due to lens vignetting. The biggest issue I had is the light leaking out from the back of the snoot. There is a gap between Bown's mount speed ring and the rest of the frame that lets in a lot of light. This is an issue when placing the device behind the model to get a projection that is on-axis with the camera. This problem can be solved by wrapping it loosely in black foil, but it's inelegant and frankly just a sloppy design. I would also like this device to come with blades for better light shaping. I may have to try to create some of these.

Pros
  • Heavy Duty
Cons
  • Damaged