When a Pair of Lume Cubes® Is Close at Hand – Fitness Photography
Updated: 11 hours ago
• Professional photography article •
I stood there rooted to the spot, confusion written across my face, without even enough energy left to be annoyed.
At that moment I probably looked more like an unfortunate man with no future who was about to give up on life than a respected professional photographer. A moment later I sat down among the gym machines, ignoring the fact that the client, models, makeup artist, hairdresser and videographer were standing above me, looking at me for an answer. I would happily have turned into a speck of dust and disappeared.
After a deep breath, I shut out the outside world and searched my memory for a similarly awkward situation, hoping it might offer a solution. I found one without having to go very far back — it had happened only a few months earlier.
That time I had merely been assisting, but I remember photographer Steve's expression very clearly. During an advertising shoot on Coney Island, an enormous gust of wind appeared out of nowhere and carried the mobile flashes away by their umbrellas — and tore the reflector straight out of my hand and into the ocean.
The situation was beyond rescue. It happened so quickly that none of us had time to react. Then the sky clouded over as well, apparently sealing the fate of the entire shoot.
I stood there open-mouthed, probably wearing exactly the same bewildered expression I had now. I checked my watch. Exactly seventeen minutes remained. The model's hair was chaos. The clothes were not much better. The sun had disappeared. And the biggest problem was that every part of the production had been calculated to the minute so the material could go to print the next day.
While I was still processing one shock after another, Steve pushed his camera and bag into my hands and ran off. He said nothing. Everyone was busy handling the crisis and saving whatever could still be saved.
I looked at my watch again. Nine minutes. The graphic designer representing the client stood calmly beside me waiting for “the material” — which did not yet exist.
Then suddenly Steve appeared behind me and called out to everyone:
“Can we continue?”
I turned around. In his hands was a huge silver reflective windscreen sunshade from a car.
He had run through the surrounding streets, going from shop to shop in search of something that could work as a reflector. Eventually, one shop owner offered him this from his truck.
It was incredible how quickly his brain worked and how he handled the situation. No accident, perhaps: he had already been a professional photographer for 34 years and had spent 12 of those years with the agency. He had probably seen almost everything.
The memory must have flashed through my mind very quickly because by the time I looked up again, the crew were already chatting among themselves.
So what exactly was the situation I had just thrown you into without explanation?
We were inside a gym. We had several locations to shoot, two fitness world champions, almost fifty sets of fitness clothing and four hours in total. The client expected professional photographs.
And I was not allowed to bring in my softboxes or studio flashes because they would disturb the people who had come there to train.
We had almost no light. Expectations were enormous. The client had placed complete trust in me. Our hourly production cost was significant. And the finished material had to be ready the following day.
While I was trying to think of an alternative light source, I suddenly remembered that I had recently bought two Lume Cube waterproof and shockproof LED lights for our DJI drone, specifically for extreme lighting situations. If I was lucky, they were still unopened in the car.
I smiled to myself. If this was not an extreme lighting situation, what was?
I remembered a promotional video showing that these tiny lights could output a surprisingly serious amount of light indoors. Still, it had never occurred to me to test them for photography. For me, a studio flash — usually paired with a reflector — was the perfect solution for lighting a model. And here, that was exactly what I needed to do.
I asked everyone for a few minutes of patience.
As I walked toward the car, I quickly watched a tutorial video on my phone — much to the delight of motorists, because I crossed the road as though traffic simply did not exist.
By the time I reached the car, a plan was forming in my head.
If the equipment really performed the way the video suggested, there was at least a chance I could work handheld with a useful shutter speed, low ISO and enough depth of field to meet the client's brief.
I opened the rear door. At first I could not find the lights in the usual chaos. Then suddenly they appeared.
I opened the shopping bag they had been sitting in since I bought them and began inspecting exactly what I had purchased.
I had completely forgotten that, besides the drone mounting brace, I had also bought several honeycomb grids and diffuser cones.
Even that would not have been enough. If I screwed the lights directly onto the tripod head, I could only position them straight up or down.
Fortunately, I had also bought two 360-degree mini ball heads for the drone. That made positioning much easier.
The next problem was attaching the modifiers. For that purpose, Lume Cube sells a separate housing — something I had not known when I bought the system.
After inspecting the light more closely, I realised that a strip of adhesive tape would do the job too. So I headed back.
We were already almost thirty minutes behind schedule. I knew in my head what I wanted to achieve, but I had never worked with lights like these before.
Watching the video made them look like child's play. In reality, the little devices were far more sophisticated than they first appeared.
First I downloaded the mobile app and paired both cubes. I could immediately see their battery levels.
The application was quick to understand. I could control the power of the two lights independently.
If I had been shooting or filming on the phone itself, they could even synchronise and work like system flashes or continuous lights.
The batteries were at 78% and 83%. I could set how long the lights should remain on before switching themselves off, down to minutes and seconds. That allowed me to preserve battery life.
At full power the output was surprisingly strong. There were ten brightness levels, also adjustable from the physical button beside the power switch.
Naturally, at maximum output the batteries drained much faster.
I knew I did not want to go below 1/160 sec or f/2.8, so I set those values on the light meter.
While measuring the light in the exact position I needed, I could fine-tune output directly from the phone and keep the ISO as low as possible.
Without a diffuser cap the light could be very hard. Sometimes I used the diffuser, sometimes I did not, depending on the environment.
I tried to balance everything with the available ambient light because that produced a much more natural image.
The client could see every photograph on a tablet immediately after exposure and tell us straight away if the clothes or models did not appear exactly as required.
It was not quite as simple as that sentence makes it sound, but I will write more about that another time.
This workflow saved enormous amounts of time.
As soon as we had a perfect frame, the client simply saved it and we moved on.
After two and a half hours, the batteries were down to roughly 24–31%.
By then we had photographed almost thirty outfits at eight to ten locations with countless different setups.
One disadvantage came from my Canon 6D and 50mm f/1.4 lens, which occasionally made independent creative decisions about focus.
Sometimes it front-focused, sometimes back-focused, and the error was not always immediately visible.
So from time to time we had to scroll through and zoom into images the client had already selected, just to verify that focus was truly correct.
Sometimes it was not.
Then the model had to put that outfit back on, we moved quickly to another location and repeated the shot.
We were around three and a half hours in when one of the lights went completely flat.
The sun was setting too, and increasingly little light was entering through the large windows.
I needed to move fast.
I pulled out my dual USB/220V adapter and connected the light to charge.
By accident, I pressed the power button on top.
The light immediately switched on.
“Wooow!” I said out loud.
I could hardly believe it worked directly from an external power source.
I pulled out the five-metre USB extension cable I normally used for the tablet and immediately continued working.
The battery soon reached around 10%.
Then I quickly switched over and began charging the second unit too, so I could keep both light sources available.
Sometimes I used the honeycomb grid. Sometimes the diffuser cap. Sometimes I had to light one person, sometimes two.
In the end, I completed the assignment — but it forced me to think about lighting in a completely different way.
Because the Lume Cube is waterproof, I decided I would eventually like to test it with red gel inside a shower for an artistic nude shoot.
Before that, however, I still need more experience with the system.
I was genuinely impressed.
I consider myself open to new technology, but without this situation I probably would never have tried the lights for photography.
They would simply have remained drone-mounted spotlights.
At the end we even put together a short behind-the-scenes video from the shoot.
Authentic portrait photography does more than create a flattering image: it reveals character, presence and personality.