You are watching Adorama TV. Hi everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Adorama TV product reviews. I'm Mark Wallace. Well this week we're looking at the Westcott 28 inch Apollo Flash kit. It's $149.90. Now let me walk through this system. It's really cool. It comes with a light stand, which is this guy right here. So a really nice light stand by Westcott. And an umbrella adapter, which allows you to add an umbrella and a speed light. And then on top of this, instead of a normal umbrella, what Westcott has created is this thing called the Apollo. And it's sort of a hybrid between an umbrella and a softbox. So I'm going to set this up in a second. It's really awesome. But first, let me talk to you about this umbrella adapter here, because I really, really love it. One, because it's all metal. So there's no plastic parts. And so it's kind of really adorable. The other thing is with a lot of these adapters where you put a flash on here, the flash has to lock onto the adapter itself. And so it's up to the flash to make sure that it's nice and secure. The problem with that is sometimes the tolerance isn't very good with an adapter, and your flash can actually fall off. Well, this one has something that's a little bit different. It's this little screw right here on the left hand, or on the right hand side. What that does is it actually clamps the flash onto the adapter. And it is just absolutely sturdy. And so it is not going to come off of there. So if you're zipping around at a wedding or something like that, you can see that it's just rock solid. And so that gives you a lot of flexibility and confidence so that you know that your flash isn't going to fall off. So I really love that just for that reason alone. Well, let me talk to you about what goes on here. And it's this thing here. It's called the Apollo. And like I mentioned before, it's sort of like an umbrella, and it's sort of like a soft box. And how it works is it opens up just like an umbrella. So let me do that really quickly here. So it goes to this center rod, and then when we open it up, a chow. There it is. So it looks sort of like an umbrella on the inside, but it's got this diffusion material. And so it works like a soft box. So what you do is you take this little guy right here, and it hops over your flash. And then it goes through your flash, your umbrella adapter, just like this. So it goes right on there, mounts like that. And then what you can do is keeping the receiving end. So this is the RF receiver area out. You can zip your flash so it's reflecting off the back, and then coming out the front. And so this just velcro is in. And now you have a nice super lightweight, very, very durable soft box. Now what we're going to do here, it's really difficult to show how awesome this is just sitting here on the set. So we're going to go into the studio and show you really fast a couple of things that you can do with the Apollo flash kit. All right. We're going to close your look at this Apollo. This is the Apollo light modifier. And on the bottom you'll see that there's four little zippers here. And what those do is that's where the actual light goes through, and then you zip that up to make sure that it's all nice and tight. Now one of the things that I noticed, and a lot of people talk about this online, is once you put this over your flash or your strobe, and then you'll take this here and make sure it's all nice and adjusted, you can actually hold this at different points along the rods. You can have it really far back like this, which is really cool because it allows the light to really bounce around to get nice, soft light. The problem with that is when you want to tilt this, I will loosen this, it doesn't tilt because it's hitting this bottom zipper thingy right here. And so what you can do is you can move this forward, and then that'll allow you to tilt that, and you have a lot of freedom of movement. Now what happens though, when you move it so far forward like that, you're losing some of that light bouncing all over the place. So one thing that some people do, I'll undo this, is they'll actually take this right off, and instead of putting it through, what they'll do is they will mount it. So first, let me make sure this is tilted. They'll mount it on the front, so that rod is going right through the front of the soft box, sort of like this, and then they'll bring this down and attach it. So that's another way, if you want to sort of an extreme tilt, you can do that. Well, those are the only gotchas, and a lot of people talk about that online, and what I normally do is I just go ahead and mount this the way that Westcott designed it to be mounted, and everything works out. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to mount this back up. We're going to bring out a model, and I'm going to show you a bunch of things that you can do with this, and I think you'll really be impressed with how awesome and easy it is to use. All right, now that you know how to set this up, Ellie is out here, she's going to help us out, she's going to be our model today. Now the neat thing about this kit is that you can do everything pretty much by yourself, so if you don't have an assistant with you or short-handed, then you're in luck with the Apollo system. So let me show you a few things that I love to do. I have my speed light set up, and I have it being controlled by my D7000, so it's all working seamlessly here. I'm using ITTL to meet or everything. So what I'll do here is I'll just show you a few things that we can do really quickly. So if I want to sort of a dramatic look, I can put this really close and use the inverse square lock to get some dramatic light fall off. Beautiful, look right at me. One more shot like that. Excellent. And you can see I got this really dramatic fall off. If I want something like a really sort of a traditional beauty shot, one of the things I can do is I can take this stand, and I can make sure that it's all the way up, and then I can become my own light stand, basically, and I'll take this in with one arm. I'll hold it, and I can put it right above Ellie. Now the cool thing is because that mount on that flash is so strong, I don't have to worry about that falling down. So Ellie, look right at me. Lower your chin just a bit. There you go. Beautiful. All right. Now I get some really dramatic looks, and I can move this around if I want to, so I'll put it up here. Maybe lower it just a hair, and then I'll move it back a little bit. You'll see now I'll get just some nice soft even light for maybe a more of a normal portrait. So again, look right at me. Good. Maybe cross your arms a little bit. Beautiful. Okay. And now you can see that we have all kinds of different looks. With one softbox, it's really easy to use. It's really fast to use, and it works seamlessly. It's not going to fall apart, and it really is worth the money. All right. Well, there you have it. It's the Westcott 28-inch Apollo Flash Kit. It comes with the Apollo, the umbrella adapter, the light stand, and again, it's $149.90, and it comes with that whole kit. So you can't go wrong, very portable, very durable, and it's just very flexible as well. And so we've added one of these to our inventory here, so we can use it in the future. I just absolutely love it. Well, thanks for joining me this week. Remember, if you have questions about photography gear or photography in general, you can send your questions to me at AskMark at Adorama.com. And don't forget to look at all of the past articles that we've done on Adorama TV. You can go to the Adorama Learning Center to see all of those things. If you're watching us on YouTube or an iTunes, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Well, thanks for joining me, and I'll see you again next time. This episode is brought to you by Adorama TV. Visit the Adorama Learning Center where you'll find photography tips and techniques, links to the gear used in this episode and related videos. For all the latest photography, video, and computer gear, visit Adorama.com. And the next time you're in New York City, visit our store, located on 18th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue.