Position your off-camera flashes with Novoflex ball heads

Categories: Accessories, Tips and Advice - Tags: Flash, Recommended, Tripods & supports

Novoflex Neiger 19 mini ball head

When you start with using off-camera flash for your photography one of the first problems you need to overcome is how to position the off-camera flash where you want it. Over the years I have tried many options, and one that I still use is the Novoflex NEIGER 19 mini ball with flash shoe. There’s so much thought gone in to the design of this little inexpensive ball head it cannot fail to impress.

It’s made of metal, so that means it will survive the rigours of use, the blue alloy is unlikely to split if you try to ‘tighten it up a bit more’

The flash shoe has a metal insert in the base, and it unscrews to reveal a standard tripod thread out of the top of the ball head. This means it will screw directly in to the base of a PocketWizard Flex TT5 or many other radio triggers. It also can be used for small cameras such as a PowerShot S95 or maybe a PowerShot G12 at a push

The fitting in the base is a standard tripod 1/4″ – 20 threaded hole, but with a reasonable sized screwdriver (of if on location a small coin) this insert can be removed to give a 3/8″ sized threaded hole. Now the head fits on top of many light stands or tripod legs directly

Manfrotto 175 clamp and Novoflex ball head

If you want to go a bit more lateral with the thinking, then with an appropriate adapter it will combine with a Manfrotto 175 spring clamp to make a ‘Manovofrottoflex’ 175F Justin clamp. In the picture above I have the clamp attached to a door handle and can bounce the flash off the white door surface for a bigger lightsource.

Thinking some more you could make a small neat combination with a Manfrotto mini clamp so now you have a travel ball head you can clamp to tables and window ledges to hold your compact camera or small light DSLR as well as a flash.