Gear & Apps
Adaptalux | Miniature Lighting Studio For Macro Photography In Last Days On Kickstarter
If you’re a macro photographer, then this Kickstarter project, if funded, could open a myriad of creative lighting options for you all in an ultra-portable, pocketable package. The Adaptalux was created by Samuel Granger who found that lighting a macro photograph was both costly and “cumbersome” and none of the lighting equipment designed for macro photography worked as well as he wanted them to.
[REWIND: 10 WEDDING RING MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS]
Among the issues he had with macro lighting equipment were that the equipment was limiting. It would work only for only some subjects and not others; they took forever to set up or change; and they were not simple solutions for his lighting needs. With a background in Product Design, Samuel went to work creating something to solve his macro photography lighting problem and the result is the spindly-armed Adaptalux that is in its last few days on Kickstarter.
The Adaptalux is made out of three parts: the Control Pod, the Lighting Arms and the Effect Components. The Control Pod is Bluetooth and Wifi ready and is the main electronic component to the system. The Lighting Arms look like little octopus tentacles are an “unbelivably bright” light source with a continuous LED light that has an output of up to 165 lumens each. The five lighting arms with five different colors to choose from connects to the pod and are fully flexible, allowing you to have control of where the light falls. The Effect Components range from filters to diffusers, backdrop setters and more to offer limitless creative options for your macro photography.
With only 4 days left and just shy of their £100,000 goal, the Adaptalux is *this* close to being funded. The basic starter pack will retail at around £155 and you can add-on from there. Watch the video below and head over to the Kickstarter page to read more about the Adaptalux and to support this project.
[Via Engadget]
best of luck to them, but i can’t justify dropping $150 on something that might not materialize.
would be a nice creative tool for those who shoot jewelry. expensive though at £170- wow.
The only thing keeping me from joining this campaign is that there are already much cheaper, acceptable, alternatives on the market.
im all for alternative solutions to products that charge an arm and leg because of a name brand that many times means high price but doesnt always mean quality.
a link would be appreciated.
My concern is the minute adjustability of those arms. A lot of flexible arms have a memory that prevents very slight adjustment. With lights that small, being able to position them exactly where you want them and have the lights stay in that position is imperative.
$150 is a lot of money to put in to a Kickstarter. It is a discount from what they want to charge retail (we won’t know what they will actually charge retail until after it is made), but there is also a lot of risk.
Awesome looking idea. Best of luck to them!
Completely agree with you. Being able to reproduce the same setup can be an important part of the macro process, and it might be a little fiddly with these lights.
$150 is not cheap to be the guinea pig on an unreleased product and untested concept.
Best of luck to them and to their supporters!
Looks interesting. I’ll check out the kickstarter.
I would just love this product – I have a keen interest in macro photography.
my first macro picture was a self portrait through my cat’s eye… and I think a product like this would help me retake the shot…
You’d think poor kitty, but no. He just was as relaxed as could be – yes, the flash was aimed backwards over my head, away from the cat… But a product like this would be excellent as it would illuminate yet not directly blind the cat, or me!!!
for the record – I was trying to get a close up of the cat’s eye – the selfie was by accident, yet was not that good as my silhouette / shadow was evident with camera in hand, but featureless – you could definitely see the place I lived in, in the background – reflected off the cat’s eye.
I shall return… the cat has been forewarned!!