What if I told you guys you could get a 300 watt light for your smash cake photography that will fill up a 5 ft modifier, recycle in under 1 second per flash and costs $109? No I'm not talking crazy, this is legit and today I'm going to prove it by reviewing the Godox MS300.

When you get older you often look backwards and think to yourself, “remember the good old days?” Well, I can honestly tell you that in photography there are no good old days.

No amount of nostalgia is ever going to get me to see the Dark Ages of photography that I went through as being better than where we are today. Let me explain away my crankiness.

Back in the dark ages the price of studio equipment was a massive barrier into the world of professional photography. For example, a 10X10 photo backdrop would run you anywhere between $800 and $1200. Nowadays that same backdrop will run you an affordable $125. What about lighting? Back in the day I got three 300 watt lights for $1,600 or $533 each. This was the beginning of my career, and asking me for $1,600 was like asking me for some moon cheese. It simply wasn’t obtainable.

Check Out Our YouTube Video On The Godox MS300

Flash forward to today and I'm happy to announce that everything's cheaper. Thanks to a high demand for high-performance yet cheap photography gear and more efficient manufacturing, we now live in a time where it is relatively* inexpensive to get into the world of photography. *Emphasis on the word relatively

Case in point, the subject of today's blog: the Godox MS300 monolight. This bad boy packs a 300 watt lighting punch for a price that won't punch a hole in your wallet. As a bonus the MS300 offers all of the high-end functionality that you would find in a much more expensive monolight for it’s very budget friendly price tag of only $109. That's right only $109 and it’s currently on sale for Amazon prime members for only $98! If you would have told me back in the day that I could have gotten a 300 watt studio strobe for $98 I would have thought that you we're trying to sell me stolen goods.

Now I can go on and on all day long about how amazing the price is but what's more impressive is what you get for that low price. Let's dive into the features of the amazing and budget-friendly Godox MS300

Wattage

The Godox MS300 is an extremely powerful monolight that delivers 300 watts of power. Now for those of you that are using speedlights for your smash cake photography 300 watts is roughly 6 times the power of the average speedlight. With that kind of power at your disposal you can use a lower iso and create beautiful noise-free images and proudly print those much much larger. Selling larger prints = larger profits for you.

Radio trigger

The Godox MS300 comes with a built-in radio receiver. This allows you to use an optional Godox radio trigger that will allow you to increase or decrease your lighting output directly from the back of your camera. No more getting up and down in the middle of a shoot to change the power output of your lights. This allows you to stay focused on your client and not break the connection that you have with a child that you are photographing. With a Godox radio trigger all I have to do is simply dial in the adjustment on the trigger that resides in my hot shoe, snap a quick pic, and then based on that picture make an adjustment until I've dialed it in perfectly. No more getting up in the middle of the session every time I needed to make a lighting change.

Looks Like A Paul Buff Alien Bee

This guts of this light look almost exactly like an Alien Bee 400 that I owned forever ago. It has the same type of flash tube and modeling light and is roughly the same size. The difference is that unlike an Alien Bee, the MS300 has a radio receiver built into the unit. The most frustrating part of an Alien Bee was you would shell out for $350 for each light and then you would have to buy a Pocket Wizard receiver for an additional $125 and a Pocket Wizard transmitter for an additional $125. So when it was all said and done you'd be into a single flash for about $550-$600. With the Godox lights the receiver is built in so in reality you only have to buy a transmitter once and then you are good to go. Couple that with the low prices that Godox offers on their lights and you're saving a ton of money over what you would have spent back in the “good old days”.

Recycle Time

Recycle time is one of those things that you don't think it's a big deal until you start shooting a child that is really moving and grooving. This is where I noticed the biggest difference between shooting with a speedlight and shooting with a monolight that has way more power. The recycle time on the MS300 is anywhere between 0.1 to 1.8 seconds which is fast enough to keep up with a rambunctious toddler. When you shoot with speedlights it can take anywhere between a second and five seconds for that speedlight to fully recharge and be available to use again. With the Godox MS300 you're looking at being able to push the trigger on your camera roughly once a second and have the light keep up. In my smash cake sessions that kind of recycle time is perfect.
At this point I’m starting to realize that this blog is getting a bit long so rather than list every feature of this unit I invite you to click this amazon link for the Godox MS300 to read about all of its features

How can the MS300 only cost $109? What's the catch?

I can honestly tell you when I went looking to replace one of my studio strobes and I found the MS300 I was a little skeptical about it because of the low price. I wasn't entirely sure that a light for under $100 could get the job done. So I started asking myself “what’s the catch?”. That's when I discovered a few of the features that I really love about the more expensive Godox lights were left out of the MS300 to help keep its price low.

The Godox MS300 has no TTL metering

For those of you who don't know, TTL stands for through the lens metering and that gives your camera the ability to talk to your light and adjust the power output based on the current lighting conditions. So basically you can point your camera at a subject and when you're using TTL the camera will come up with the power output for the flasht and adjust the flash output for what the camera believes to be a perfect exposure. This is a handy feature if you are a wedding shooter or during a senior portrait session. But in my experience with shooting smash cake photography most of the time I’m in the studio and I'm using manual settings. So for me TTL metering is a costly addition to a studio strobe that I simply don't use.

No high speed sync

Briefly, let's talk about what high speed sync is. High speed sync means that your flash and your camera will synchronize when you are using shutter speeds above 1/200 of a second. If you set your shutter speed higher than 1/200 of a second then the shutter in your camera will move faster than your flash and the shutter will block the flash from reaching part of your sensor. This results in half of your image being completely black. The cure for this is HSS or high speed sync.

For most of you, high speed sync isn't necessary because you're using shorter lenses like the 35mm, 50mm, or the 85mm lens. But if you're like me and you use a longer lens like the 70-200mm, then you need to keep your shutter speed higher to avoid camera shake. Camera shake creates blurry images that are caused by having a heavy lens on the front of your camera. For example, in my smash cake sessions my shutter speed is around 1/400 of a second at all times to avoid this problem. So if my flash doesn't have high speed sync I can't use my long lens. For me this is a deal-breaker because part of the look that sets my photography apart comes from using a Sony G master 70-200mm lens .

But the majority of the smash cake world uses shorter focal length lenses, so you don't need to set your shutter speed at 1/400. Lower shutter speeds work just fine. If you use shorter focal length lenses then you don't need to add the expense of high speed sync to your flashes, and the very affordable Godox MS300 will work just fine for you.

No detachable battery

To be fair, this last one is me being wicked picky. I have been using the Godox AD600 for many years now and I've fallen in love with the fact that this unit is powered by a giant battery pack built into the Flash. This means no cords coming off the back of my flash and it’s one less thing for my tiny clients to grab onto and possibly hurt themselves with. But the truth is you can make any flash safer by simply adding sandbags to the bottom of your light stand. So for those of you that are on a budget you can get around the safety issues of cords by purchasing $20 worth of sandbags.

A Fantastic Value For The Price. I Highly Recommend It!

As you can see, the negatives (no pun intended) don't really outweigh the amazing price tag of the Godox MS300. It really is a powerhouse of a light for almost no money. I can honestly say that if I had had this as an option 10 years ago I would have saved a ton of money and it would have been easier to afford the gear I needed to grow my business.

If you are in the beginning stages of growing your business I highly recommend checking out this light.. The price point of this light allows you to buy three of them for the same price that I used to spend on one old school Alien Bee light and pocket wizard in the dark ages.

I hope this was helpful and if it was, let me know. I'd love to hear from you guys in the comment section. Also if you have any questions about this light just ask. I had the opportunity to play around with a couple of these and really really enjoyed it. Send over those questions and I’ll give you my thoughts.

Once again thanks for reading you guys and I will catch you later,

Daniel

Studio Lighting On The Cheap.