PeteFree.comCalumet Illuma Medium Sized Photographic Soft Box 30 x 40 x 14 Inches — Review
© 2013 Peter Free
13 June 2013 (revised 05 March 2015)
My Calumet Illuma sample was so poorly designed and manufactured — that it was unusable
Even without my sample’s manufacturing defects, I doubt that this product would make even the most minimal of grades in experienced users’ hands.
As a probable result, Calumet’s occasional product-making twin, Bowens — which reportedly used the same initial design — apparently was motivated to redesign portions of it for its newer Lumiair line.
That said, one talented professional photographer disagrees with my negative review of the Illuma
Dan Howell contacted me in early March 2015 to say that his sample of the discontinued Illuma works perfectly, the only difference being that he uses a Plume Wafer speed ring to mount it.
I can certainly see why this might work. Especially if the Plume Wafer wand holders are angled differently than the Calumet/Bowens speed ring that I used. (See the below pictures.)
You may (however) wonder why Calumet would have sold the Illuma — which is reportedly a knock-off of the expensive Plume Wafer line (designed by the same person) — and not have mentioned that Calumet’s own Calumet/Bowen speed rings would not properly mount it.
For that reason, I have left the negative tone of my review in place. I tried my Illuma with a total of three different speed rings. It worked just as miserably with each.
Pictures tell the story
In words
Obvious negatives included:
(1) The box’s 4 flexible frame wands (rods) were far too weak to hold it in its designed rectangular shape.
(2) The Illuma’s vertical sides were lopsided and apparently irregularly cut.
(3) The rear cowl, a separate piece that velcros closed, was too small to fit over the Calumet QuickRing that the box’s instructions refer to.
(4) The box’s 4 interior hanging loops were not the same length, so the 2 internal baffles hung lopsidedly — thereby allowing too much light over the top and too little at the bottom and one side.
(5) The double baffle design is stupid because it simply hangs one internal diffuser atop the other — from snaps on the front and back of the box’s interior suspension loops — rather than allowing for separation (and additional light manipulation) between them.
(6) The front diffuser was yellow, not white, so the color temperature of the box’s output did not match my other softboxes — which come from two different manufacturers, who apparently had no trouble making color correct diffusers.
(7) This Illuma’s front diffuser was also too big, even when I mounted it as far out on the box’s Velcro perimeter as possible, thereby still leaving unsightly folds and no room at all for an egg crate grid.
(8) The combination of inane design and manufacturing sloppiness was further aggravated when I tried hanging the egg crate grid — which was correctly sewn and specifically designed to fit the box — from it.
The moral? — One could excuse all of this as a bad sample, except for the fact that . . .
The weak wands condemned this patience-assaulting atrocity to the equivalent of the trash bin.
In fairness, as Dan Howell suggested to me, it is possible that a Plume Wafer speed ring would have saved it. Or (from my perspective) that my sample contained the wrong wands.
Nevertheless, given that Bowens apparently redesigned essentially the same box for its Lumiair series — after the Illuma style box had been on the market a while — my deficient sample of the Illuma may have represented a noticeable proportion of those older boxes.