Lowel Ego: Affordable Light

Ask any seasoned photographer what the most difficult aspect to taking images is, and you will get a reply: "Lighting". Professionals use thousands of dollars of equipment just for lighting, but what is the common photographer supposed to do? Lowel decided to create a product which would be priced reasonably within a person's budget.

Portability

If you've ever gone on a studio shoot, you know it's quite an ordeal to pack up your lighting equipment and take it with you. Booms, stands, reflectors, power packs, and everything else has to be accounted for. Lowel created a portable lighting system to alleviate some of the shooting situations photographers would encounter. Obviously you can't replace a robust lighting system for some situations, but the Lowel Ego lights can offer you an opportunity to keep your larger lighting systems at home until you absolutely need them. And if you don't currently have any lighting system, the Ego is an affordable tool to help you get those images you've always wanted without the nasty "Fired Flash" look. Having a size of 17-inches wide, 16.5-inches tall, and about 5-inches in depth, the Lowel Ego can go anywhere you travel.

No Flash Required

The Lowel Ego lighting system was created so that you don't have to use your camera flash. So many images are ruined due to the front firing of a basic camera flash. True, these on-board flashes are useful, but just try to get a nice gradient reflective lighting effect from your typical compact camera flash. A DSLR flash system will due somewhat better, but when we get into the compact camera flash category, reliable flash settings are much more difficult to achieve.

Small But Powerful

Two 27-Watt Flourescent lamps reside in the Ego, emitting an equivalency incandescent rating of 200-watts. This is a very powerful little package Lowel has designed. For further lighting effects, you could unscrew one of the lights, for a more ambient look. The Lowel Ego lamps are specially designed to be used with the Lowel Ego System.

Impressive Color Rendering Index

You may not be familiar with the CRI rating of lights. The Color Rendering Index is a measurement of lights on a scale of 0 to 100, where a rating of 100 is the best possible rendering of the reference color source. In other words, a lamp rating of 100 in reference to lighting a red apple for a photographic shoot...will look like a red apple, and not an orange...or a peach...or a grape. Lowel Ego lights have a CRI rating of 91. A typical flourescent light will have a CRI of 62-70 (those wonderful blue lights). The lights Lowel uses are termed Full Spectrum. These lights are triphosphate, which means the lamps contain one phosphate for each primary color (Red, Green, and Blue). Natural light coming from the sun has a CRI rating of 100, so you can expect the Lowel lamps with a rating of 91 will come out extremely accurate, representing what you actually see.