Lumiquest Promax System Review

A while back, I was asked to shoot a friend’s birthday party that was being held in a function room near where he lived. I shot events with my on camera flash, bounced off the ceiling, and with a small Joe Demb flip-it on the flash to add some front fill.This worked fairly well, except in this case when I arrive at the venue to see the ceilings are really high. I mean really high - way higher than the ceilings in our victorian terraced house. Ceiling bounce was a total no go and there were mirrors at head height around most of the walls - a nightmare room for flash shooting. I ended up with decent shots but the lighting was pretty much straight camera flash with only slight diffusion from my flip-it. My friend loved the pictures though, which is the main thing.

After this, I had a look round for a modifier I could use on the flash that would cope with situations like this. In the end, I decided to get the Lumiquest Promax system as it seemed to offer the flexibility that I’m after. In the box you get:

- A folding A5 sized plastic wallet to store everything in. It all folds flat, so it’s easy to transport, and there is room in the wallet for my flash gels.

- A Lumiquest 80-20.

- A diffuser that fits to the front of the 80-20.

- White, silver and gold inserts for the top of the 80-20 in case you have no ceiling to bounce off.

- Some velcro to stick to your flash so you can attach the 80-20 to it.

I didn’t really fancy sticking velcro to my flash, so I picked up one of the excellent HonlPhoto Speed Straps to attach everything to. Lumiquest also do their own Cinch Strap, which is essentially the same thing.

Lumiquest 80-20 with gold insert

Lumiquest 80-20 with diffuser

I did a few quick test shots so you can see the effect of different configurations. The camera was in manual mode (f8 1/125) and the flash in e-ttl 2 mode. I used the +ve and -ve compensation buttons on the flash to try and get consistent exposures. The images are crops from the main picture and resized.

To start with are a couple of shots without any modifiers:

With direct flash, the lighting is fairly harsh and also quite flat.

Bouncing the flash off the ceiling is better and gives a bit more shape to the subject but there is a lot of shadows caused by the downwards direction of the light.

The main part of the Promax system is the Lumiquest 80-20. This allows you to bounce your flash off the ceiling but also directs about 20% of the light forwards (hence the name).

With the 80-20 attached, you get the softer light from the ceiling bounce as well as some front fill for the shadows.

Fitting the included diffuser panel onto the front of the 80-20 helps soften the light from the front fill. This is probably my favourite combination.

So far, so good, but what do you do when you are in nightmare high ceiling room? The Promax system comes with inserts that fit to the top of the 80-20, turning it into basic flash diffuser. This doesn’t give results as good as using the 80-20 but it is a lot better than direct flash.

The white insert gives a neutral light which can be softened further with the diffuser panel.

This is the combination that I would use when shooting in a room with high ceilings or even when using fill flash outdoors.

The other inserts included in the system are silver and gold.

The silver insert gives a cooler and slightly harsher light than the white one. I wouldn’t have cause to use this very often, but it’s always nice to have the option available.

Here is the diffused version for comparison.

The gold insert gives a warmer light on the subject which often works well on skin tones to give a tanned look.

The tanned look doesn’t really suit my spud-trooper but the white of the subject highlights the effect.

Here is the diffused version.

The diffused version gives quite a nice light and I could see myself using this from time to time.

From the test shots, you can see that it is a very flexible system that gives the user a few options when using an on camera flash. For high ceilings it definitely performs better than direct flash but the best results are when you are able to use the 80-20 as intended.

The downside in the system is that, with the flash mounted on the camera, you will get different lighting when switching the camera between landscape and portrait orientation. To get around this, you need to be shooting with the flash off the camera. When shooting an event, I am likely to switch between portrait and landscape quite often so wanted to find a solution that would keep my lighting consistent. In the end, I went for a Stroboflip flash bracket, which allows me to keep the flash the same position, regardless of the camera orientation.

Pros:
- Easy to attach (especially if you have a speed strap)

- Folds flat for easy storage

- Gives a number of options when shooting on camera flash

- Better result than bare flash or ceiling bounce on it’s own

Cons:
- Angle of front fill is not adjustable so the lighting ratio depends on the height of the ceiling

- Can only really use it in landscape mode unless you get the flash off the camera.