All language subtitles for 10. Grips and clamps

Clamps and grips are often overlooked
by photographers, especially those

starting out in photography,

but they're actually a very, very
useful set of accessories for your studio

let's.

Start with the most simple.

This is a clothes peg.

And these small clamps here, which are
slightly stronger than closed pegs, are

extremely useful for gripping clothes,

pinning articles of clothing back on
your model or on your portrait subject,

to create a more even surface and
better fitting clothes.

Moving up from that, we've got what I
call diy store clamps that come in

different sizes.

These I pick up at my

local diy store.

They're very cheap, very economical,

they're quite strong, but the plastic
clamps, like this are

prone to break.

I use these for gripping

reflectors or holding things onto,
lighting stands, putting flags in to

block the light.

But they've got a limited shelf life in
terms that after a while, they tend to

snap and break.

So if you want something a little bit
more durable, then you can move to a

proper studio clamp like this one,
which is a lot stronger,

but is also more expensive.

So obviously this does the same job as
this.

It's just this one is going to last you
a lot longer.

They go right up to this sort of size
if you've got larger polyboards to grip

as well.

Now more specialist clamps are

these cockle or cocoa clamps by phober.

And these are particularly interesting
because they have a flat side

and they have a curved side.

And that makes them useful for gripping
to the arms and grips

that we covered in the stands section.

Let me just get a board and show you
why.

So if we look

at the arms that we use they're
obviously clindrical.

So having the curved side on the fober
cocoall or cockle clamp means we get a

better grip

onto the arm.

So for gripping flags and reflectors

to our arms, it means we can do a much
better job with this particular clamp

because it has that curved element on
it here.

So it means we can easily grip

flags

or

reflector boards onto our arms.

So we've already seen how we use these
arms and grips for potentially

holding studio lamp heads, but they're
also very useful for holding all sorts

of accessories, flags reflector boards
as well.

And these clamps are ideal for that
purpose.

The next one I want to look at is a
magic arm.

The magic arm is quite a useful
accessory

in that you have an attachment with the
screw thread here, where you can screw

this directly

onto the end of a lighting stand or
onto a grip.

So we just turned that on here,

that attaches on, like here,

so we can attach that onto

a rod or onto a lighting stand.

And it allows you to get

a magic arm bent into a different
position

and then attach a different kind of
clamp onto there.

So that if you wanted to hold a

reflector, panel, a mirror

or another flag

in a more difficult or awkward
position, then using a magic arm means

we can get those position very
accurately wherever I want.

And I use this a lot for product
photography, where I'm holding mirrors,

silver cards or reflector panels to
direct accurately my light at small objects.

But also very useful in portraiture and
beauty photography.

So that's the magic arm.

Now, while we're discussing, that

let's come back to

that clamp that we just looked at.

Here

you'll see with this clamp, which is a
very popular studio clamp.

You've got a large, flat, surface with
four rubber inserts,

plus the ability to connect it to a
lighting stand or a magic arm, as I

just demonstrated.

But also the attachment with a screw
thread here,

allowing you to screw that directly

onto the end of a lighting stand as
well for the larger, 38th inch thread

kupo clamps.

This is the heavy duty clamp.

These are also extremely useful.

They have a very, very strong grip, so
you can contain

all sorts of

solid pieces of wood.

I'm regularly putting these on top of
lighting stands, so you can see the

connector point here.

This fits onto a lighting stand.

You can have two lighting stands with
one of these on each lighting stand.

And then you can put cross bars for
holding backgrounds

or rods across holding supports,
different props, etc.

Extremely useful.

And I've got dozens of these in my
studio.

They have a locking pin here as well as
the tightening device to make sure that

they fit securely onto a lighting stand.

Moving up the larger.

Copo grips, these are very, very
strong, and you can see two hands to

almost open that.

They are very

heavy duty clamps that also have this
adjuster here

that allows you to change the size

of the opening of the clamp.

Additionally,

they have a connector to attach them to
a lighting stand,

or the ability to

and light onto

the actual clamp itself.

Let me just demonstrate that and get a
studio light.

So here with a studio light,

you can see

I could actually attach

the studio light

onto the clamp.

Which means that we can actually use
the clamp

to bracket a studio light onto a beam,
a column, or an awkward position

in a building if you're lighting
architecture shots, all sorts of

different things.

But it gives you the ability to
actually position a studio light in an

awkward place, because the clamp is
heavy duty enough to actually hold the

studio light.

So that attachment is made

via that pin here,

and that pin there is for it to go onto
a lighting stand.

The larger copo grip

also has the same, the ability for it
to attach to a studio light.

But this is a very heavy duty clamp.

This is about the heaviest duty clamp
that I would

probably use in my studio.

This has a turn mechanism here,

that means we can adjust

the tightness of that grip

to a very

strong grip.

And there's no way these move there's
so heavy duty.

And you still also have the ability to
attach this onto a studio lighting

stand if you want to see, you've got
the same number of options of

attachment here and the ability to
attach a studio light there.

So that's the range of different studio
clamps and supports that I use in my studio.

Some of them are extremely important
for product photography and advertising photography,

but they are also very, very useful for
portraiture, for holding

reflectors, holding flags, holding
clothes in position and even

positioning lights where you need them.