Are you an off-camera flash/strobe/speedlight/studio photographer? (or considering getting into it?)

Are you looking for a way to increase your light power without sacrificing portability?

Use a lot of studio umbrellas? Or got a big one?

Operating on a limited budget, or want to use the gear you have, regardless of brand?

...Then have a look at my 3 cold shoe mount that works particularly well with larger umbrellas.

I recently got a big185cm (6 feet) diameter studio umbrella, and found that my typical camera flash just couldn't get the power and light dispersed evenly enough over the enormous umbrella canopy without certain sacrifices that were far from ideal.

Sure, I could also buy a bigger studio strobe unit... but I have several old flashes laying about and thought... "I could just use those with some radio triggers". It turns out... that I really can. But I needed a mount to do that.. so here we are.

NOTES:

This handles umbrella shafts up to 8mm in diameter (which is the largest I've ever used) and uses a reasonably common M6 wing bolt (or machine screw) to clamp the whole mount + flashes + triggers at any place along the umbrella shaft I like (important for parabolic umbrellas).

By using three flashes in an umbrella, you obviously gain roughly triple the power and coverage. So with larger umbrellas this will obviously soften the light. It also allows you to have greater flexibility in use. You can move one larger umbrella further away/turn off a flash or two so it looks more like a smaller umbrella for more controlled light "sculpting". Alternatively, it also allows you to try using a lower power setting (faster recycle time/less overheating issues/more shots taken on a single set of batteries).

WILL THIS WORK WITH ANY FLASH?

I used the ISO-518-2006 hot shoe standard during this design to ensure the mount will fit ANY brand of hot-shoe mounted flash available today.. and handle pretty much every flash I can think of dating back to 1966.

It might save you a few bucks over buying a more expensive setup.