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Back in September 2011 I reviewed the Flora Light Bank from Linco and found them to be excellent for video work and not so bad for photography too. Now the people at Linco have come up with a new wireless version. So lets find out if the addition of a remote control is a revolution or just a gimmick.

The most obvious change from the old Flora to the new is snappy new colour scheme. White and green have been replaced by black and red, which looks very smart indeed. The colour may have changed but the design has not. The Flora was and still is a well designed and well built piece of equipment. The main body is made from flame proof heavy duty plastic and the lamp holders are ceramic.

In fact the only significant improvement that I could find was the addition of a foam handle that doesn’t fall off, a marked improvement from the original

So if you’re in the market for a Flora Light then the question must be do I need the wireless feature?

You get two remote controls with each light bank. Each remote has the same two buttons and each button switches three of the six bulbs on or off. They work even if the main switch on the back of the Flora is turned off.

Personally I would have liked to have seen the ability to switch on the bulbs one at a time, via the remote. This would give a lot more control over the lighting for us photographers and I dare say for videographers as well.

Perhaps the biggest issue you might have with the remotes is that they’re tied to the light bank they came with. The idea being that you can separately control multiple light banks. However if you lose or break the remotes then you’re stuck. Also if you have multiple lights you’ll need to carry around multiple remotes which all look the same, but only operate one light bank.

So which would I recommend, wireless or original? For me in my little studio with just one or two lights the original light bank is best suited. However if you have a video setup with the lights in less accessible heights, then I can see the sense in going wireless.

Flora Light Banks are available from www.lincostores.com Linco ship to US addresses only.

When it comes to getting very accurate colours in your photos, you’ll need to start with a known colour reference. That’s where a grey card comes into it’s own.

I’ve used several grey cards in recent years, but the WhiBal from Michael Tapes Design USA is my current favourite. The WhiBal cards come in several sizes ranging from Studio sized 8”x10” sheets, right down to the dinky keyring sized Whibal Card. They’re all made from plastic which means they’re waterproof and fairly durable, although I suspect the keychain version would get scuffed up quite quickly.

It’s worth noting that these are the sort of grey cards that are used for getting perfect colour balance rather then the kind of grey cards that are used for getting perfect exposure. As such the WhiBal cards are all light grey in colour, although to be technically accurate they have no colour at all, as they are certified colour neutral.

Colour Accuracy
So how does the WhiBal perform?  Like all good tools these things make a mundane, everyday task, simple and predictable. In this case it’s job is  to get the colours accurate and to that end it’s faultless.

You might not be able to see much difference in the photo opposite (click it to enlarge) but trust me, when it comes to something like skin tones, the difference between getting the colours almost right and getting the colours spot on is vast.

Added bonus
All the WhiBal cards have a couple of nice touches… a ruler scale along the edge, Black and white patches and a star burst shaped target. Now personally I don’t find most of these that useful, but I’m sure others will. However the star burst target is a great way to check and remove lens chromatic aberrations.

In the next blog post I’ll show you exactly how I’ve integrated the WhiBal into my studio workflow.

Prices & availability
At $20 for my favourite “credit card” sized WhiBal card, these things aren’t disposable but unless you loose it, I’m sure it will last for a very long time. Sadly the WhiBal cards are a US import only, although mine arrived within a week and without any problems with customs charges. Details and prices can be found on the Michael Tapes Design website.

Hopefully every photographer reading this already knows that the best and fastest way to get your images from a memory card to your computer is via a card reader. For the past few years I’ve been using either the internal card reader fitted to my PC or an external Compact Flash card reader. Both have been great, but all of a sudden they’re out of date!

So what’s changed? Well my new PC is fitted with the a couple of USB 3 sockets and on paper USB 3 is up to 10 times faster then USB 2 which powers my existing card readers. Now the important words in that last sentence were “on paper" and “up to” because as the saying goes… results may vary.

I really wanted to test the speed claims for USB 3 so I bought a Lexar USB 3 card reader, but before I get to the speed test, lets take a closer look at what I bought.

Lexar USB 3
There’s loads of card readers on the market, but the Lexar caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First up it’s a true USB 3 reader, so it should be fast. Next was the build quality, which from previous experience of Lexar readers I hoped would be excellent. Finally at £25 it’s sits nicely in the middle of the price range for card readers.

OK, I admit it’s hard to get excited about a card reader and the Lexar isn’t going to change that fact. For the record it’s a duel card reader accepting all types of SD and Compact Flash cards. It features a pop up design which Lexar says is to stop dust getting onto the contacts… Hold on, dusty contacts. Really? Marketing hype aside, the pop up / snap shut design is a nice fun touch.

It might just be me, but I’ve broken loads of Compact Flash card readers and the problem is always the same. Bent / broken pins.  The good news here is The Lexar USB 3 is more like a DSLR in as much as it keeps the pins deep inside the unit. It makes pushing the card in at an angle almost impossible, so the pins won’t get bent. That may not sound like a big thing, but trust me it is.

The USB Cable
I found two areas of concern and frankly neither is that bad. First is the use of shiny black plastic, which looks great of course, but it’s a dust and fingerprint magnet. Mind you half the gadgets I own have exactly the same problem. One day the matte finish will become fashionable again… I hope.

Then there’s the USB cable. At roughly 1 meter in length, it’s a bit short for me, but it also features a strange new connector. OK so the end that plugs into the PC is a normal USB plug but the end that connects into the reader is unique amongst my collection of cables (see update below). Not a problem unless like me, you’re planning to travel with the unit and you tend to lose cables.

UPDATE: It appears the cable is a new mini USB3 standard fit, so as this become more common losing a cable should be less of a problem.

Speed test
So I started this review by talking about speed and lets face it that’s why I bought the darn thing in the first place. As this is a USB 3 device you’ll need a USB 3 socket to take advantage of the increased speed. I should point out that it’s backwards compatible so will work on USB 2 but at a slower speed.

I tested the unit with a SanDisk 30MB/s card which is the fastest I own and represents the most common type of card I see photographer use.

UBS 3 Read speed (Ave.) 48 MB/s (megabytes per second)
UBS 3 Write speed (Ave.) 30 MB/s 
UBS 2 Read speed (Ave.) 24 MB/s 
UBS 2 Write speed (Ave.) 21 MB/s 

As you can see using the USB 3 socket halved the time it took to get my photos off the memory card. Pretty impressive considering the card isn’t expected to go that quick. Writing times were less impressive, but then that’s not something I do very often.

By the way my internal card reader (USB 2) only averaged 17 MB/s moving the same files, so even on a USB 2 PC there was a small speed benefit

Summery
The Lexar USB 3 is a great bit of kit, well designed, well built and I’d recommend it to anyone wanting a new external card reader.

However if you want the “speed” of USB 3 then you’ll need the right type of memory card such as UDMA Compact Flash and SDXC SD memory cards.