As a very active Live Streamer and Influencer on YouTube and elsewhere, I have come to really like various lighting products from RALENO. I have multiple studio setups that require various lighting options. These include a sit-down desk-based studio with Green Screen chromakeying; a Product Review stand-up studio for precise product demos that require very specific color temperature and brightness-controlled lighting; as well as my full kitchen overhead studio where I produce cooking live streams and videos. RALENO lights of various types are very numerous in my studio activities.This new softbox LED Lighting kit is yet another superb system from a company I have come to trust for my needs. The 5500K Daylight Temperature of the 50W LED lights is perfect for many uses, including highlighting natural skin tone.While there is no dimming capability with this system, placement of the lights accomplishes the same effective function. Setup is straightforward and easy, and the tripod stands are stable...handling the weight of the softboxes without issue. The assembly of the softboxes is child-simple and intuitive.The lights have many potential uses and supplement my excellent ROLENO 192 Flat Panel LED lights extremely well. Great for beginners as well as professionals.I am extremely pleased with this latest offering from RALENO, and they easily earn a strong FIVE STARS from me...along with my honest and hearty recommendation. First-rate lights from an excellent company. Outstanding value at the price on Amazon as well!

This is our favorite standing lamp ever. There’s two needs for a lamp: efficiency & aestheticismI love tripod lamps and wicker lamps and the oil lamp aesthetic but it’s either - their switch is inconvenient or their shade is too yellow or the shade reflects a texture on the echoing light or the shade being glass makes you want to wear sunglasses in your own home. The torch light plays with light-travel science, is ergonomic, and unimposing which could dare I say be aesthetic on its own, especially for minimalism.So if you’ve ever played a video on your phone in the bathroom, prop it in such a way that you pressed the speakers closer to another object. The sound waves coming out of your speakers will bounce off the object & you wind up with louder output. You didn’t change the volume but the way that the sound is dispersed is now more efficient & reaches your ears better, thus sounding louder.Similarly, the point of the torchlight is to bounce the light more efficiently throughout the room by aiming its light toward the ceiling. I’ve always known this trick but never have I seen a design properly make use of it. In short, this (1) lamp alone can make your room feel like you have recess lighting installed. That’s how powerful it is! The soft touch on and off and dimming abilities also make it such a great product bc it doesn’t add on to the shape of the lamp.We purchased a second lamp for us for a different room and will continue to purchase one for every major room in the future! This is amazing!

This is a very sturdy dashboard type mount. The spring that essentially clamps this is very strong and supplemented by rubber pad on the underside and felt fabric on the top (touching actually dashboard top).In the photos, you'll see that I have this against a "fruit" phone 13 Max inside a lifeproof case to see the compare the size. The device does hold the phone well and it'll stay still while driving. Depending on the angle of your steering wheel and your light of sight, this makes for a good mobile device holder.My concerns and my intent of use.... I anticipate to travel a lot (and was traveling significantly pre-pandemic). When I travel, I take advantage of the maps on my phone and leave my standalone gps at home. When I use my phone on a rental car, I used to have it on an flexible tripod on the dashboard - but have found that it slides sometimes when I done properly wedge it between the dashboard and the windshield. For my intent of use, this clamp will be a better solution. My concern is that over time, the plastic material that secures the spring to clamp this down might deteriorate due to the heat as the car bakes everything with our weather. Not a deal breaker for me as again, this will be mostly for travel and will be removed out of the "rental" car once I'm done. 5 stars as my concern is only a concern until validated otherwise.

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 This is an excellent alternative to more expensive brand named portable lighting fixtures. This light wand provides just as much light as other lighting fixtures, however, it is more versatile in the sense that it can change color over a full R-G-B spectrum, and also has built-in preset modes that include different types of fades and flashing. It may seem confusing at first, but really there are only four buttons to work with, and they’re very easy to understand once you read the directions. The up/down buttons are to change brightness or color, whereas the power button can turn the device on and off (with a long press) or it can change between editing brightness or editing color (with one short press). The M button stands for mode, and changes between the three modes: RGB color spectrum, different temperatures of white, and the preset flashing/fading modes. In addition to this versatility, there is a built in magnet on the top, bottom, and side so you can mount it to anything magnetic. I have found this especially helpful because sometimes, having to screw a lighting fixture onto a tripod and taking it off can be very time-consuming in the grand scheme of photography/videography life. Sometimes, having the opportunity to get the perfect shot only comes once, and time can be of the essence in these moments. Because of the convenience, and the versatility, I highly recommend this product.Video included to show how the item works. Photos also included to show some of the different colors.Hoping this review was a helpful review for you!

Finally, a few weeks since purchase, i was able to enjoy these 25x100 bins under a clear, dark sky. I'm pleased to say i had an excellent and memorable observing session. Highlights included a sparkly Caldwell 64 (my favorite open cluster after m35), the blue and gold optical double 145 g canis majoris (popping with beautiful color against the dark sky), and, believe it or not, the Blue Snowball (yes, i could see it's color and, despite its small size, detect the fuzziness of its border). Also: m35, dense with stars and erupting with many more when slightly averting the eye, the grand m37, and, near Sirius, the busy Little Beehive cluster, m41. The Andromeda galaxy seemed almost bright. Bode's and the Cigar were easily detectable, despite rising above a neighbor's porch lights. I would return periodically to the Orion Nebula as Orion would rise and my eyes would further dark-adapt. The familiar haze of the nebula appeared "brighter" and seemingly deeper with each view. I mount these bins on a tall, sturdy photo tripod with a fluid panhead. Looking too near the zenith has me positioned in a lunge stance while craning my neck. However, there is plenty of high sky that is more comfortable to observe. This setup is hard to beat when it comes to grab-and-go, not to mention the ease of moving around a site. What is nice about mounted bins in general, when desperate for some skywatching on a semi-cloudy night, i can bring out the bins and scan open patches of sky instantly.

I'm a new strobist meaning that I'm not sure how much cash I'd like to dump in the bottomless hole of photography gear. The canon strobes where attractive but I just couldn't justify the expense...yet! After a bunch of research I ended up getting the Vivitar DF-383, with the legendary status of the 285 I figured the Vivitar knew how to make a nice flash and in fact the do. I've used this flash in both TTL and manual mode and feel that my frames are pretty consistent and what I expected. In slave mode the DF-383 has fired for me even in brighter outdoor conditions moreover it feels fairly well built...even after a few tripod falls (oops!) it's survived.Here's what I don't love about this flashgun.1. The hinge for changing the angle of the flash head for bounce and what not is rather weak, at least on my model. I use a Gary Fong lightsphere (which i LOVE) and I have to hold the head in position when photographing in portrait orientation. My youngnou YN-65 extreme budget strobes have a much better hinge.2. The backlight for display is rather weak. Or maybe it's my eyes? In either case it's hard to see the full display in low light conditions.3. The IR beam for focus lock in low light is not so great. Again my youngnou YN-65 performs better in this regard.

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 Truly sky high, this aluminum tripod/stand can reach a whopping maximum height of 16 feet. It's fairly well made, with aluminum tube construction and metal joints.The base gets pretty wide and locks securely. Although the two knobs to secure the base are plastic. I also felt like the thickness of the legs could have been bigger given how high the stand goes.The stand is air cushioned, so you're not likely to have heavy gear come crashing down on your fingers while making height adjustments. Nice to have.The top of the stand terminates in a threaded adapter which can be repositioned either vertically or horizontally. The adapter is metal, but the seat for it and it's knob are plastic.While the stand is nice, it's not at all what I'd consider "heavy duty", not by a long shot. I wouldn't trust anything more than a few pounds being mounted on it, since the whole thing sways back and forth like crazy. It's aluminum, makes sense. But I wouldn't pay this much for an aluminum stand like this. The price is outrageous and certainly not inline with what it is. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just not priced accordingly.Good for light duty uses, not so much for strobes with diffusers, even if you were to put mad sand bags all over the bottom.

One day a couple years ago, out of the blue, my next door neighbor declared he wanted to buy a telescope. And, here I was a former telescope dealer and veteran amateur astronomer of 33 years. What are the odds? So I did a lot of research and helped my neighbor buy the "perfect" first telescope. We decided on the Celestron NexStar 127SLT Maksutov. Its long f/ratio provides high magnifications, superior contrast and image quality for Solar, planetary & Lunar study, and splitting double stars. It is also no slouch when it comes to deep sky objects (DSOs). Fast ratio Newtonians, like f/5, are specialized instruments that boast low power and wide fields of view, but they have anemic magnifications and comatic aberrations. The Mak, on the other hand, has superior optics and is an excellent "all-round" instrument whether for planetary or deep sky.I have spent a fair amount of time, over several observing sessions, looking through his Nexstar 127SLT Mak at globular clusters, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Ceres & Vesta, the Moon, double stars, &etc. It optics are excellent. And, it is built like a Sherman tank! My neighbor accidentally dropped his Mak onto the living room carpet from off the mount, and it was still perfectly aligned when we tested it later that night!The Mak's long f/ratio is also very forgiving when is comes to simpler design, less expensive, eyepieces. It does not require high-end, well corrected eyepieces [Naglers] like fast ratio scopes to correct its ills. So it is easier on the wallet.The GOTO gave us real fits in the beginning, but careful reading and re-reading of the manual (men don't need to read instructions) on proper procedures for calibrating GOTO actually gave us amazingly accurate acquisition of the several objects from the handset's 4,000 object catalog.It also produces great CCD stacked images of the Sun (with proper filters), planets and the Moon. DSOs require long time exposures on a German Equatorial Mount.I am not very impressed with these Red Dot laser finders. If you cannot see the object with your naked eye the dot finder is useless. It really needs a decent 50mm finder scope to snare DSOs. Most telescopes these days come with these 21st century, trendy but crummy, laser finders. But a good old fashioned 7x50mm finder scope would add $75 to the cost of the telescope. I find that by using a dual mount dove tail one can mount a good finder scope and retain the dot finder. They compliment each other and work well together for snaring your targets.The tripod/mount quality is just as important as the optics. Here is where most entry level scopes fail with mounts that do not pass the tube tap test. Most instruments in this class can take up to 4 seconds to settle down whether it be wind or manipulating the focuser. A heavy-duty tripod and mount will have damping times of 1 second to none, but such a system would cost as much and more than the entire $400 package!The Celestron NexStar 127SLT Maksutov is a very practical little "grab & go" scope that can be carried (fully assembled) in one hand.In this entry level for telescopes the 127SLT Mak is an excellent choice with superior optics.