Professional hotography equipment - Century C-stands - My favorite piece of photography lighting equipment (3/4/8)

Probably one of my favorite pieces of photographic lighting equipment is the Century C stand.  Believe it or not, I probably have over thirty of these stands in my studio and there are still times when I run out.  They are pretty cool.  Heavy as hell, but still pretty cool.

Probably the biggest advantage that they have over other light stands is the ability they have to be placed right next to each other.  See how the height of each leg is different?  This allows the photographer to place stands close together by nesting the leg of one stand under the leg of the next stand.   Try doing this with other light stands and you end up with a interwoven pile of metal, where you STILL can’t get the stands close enough together to get what you want. The arms and knuckles of the c-stand are the reason you want the light stands so close to each other.  The arms are great for holding various lighting control devices such as mirrors, flags, scrims, reflectors, clamps, and pretty much EVERYTHING else in the entire studio.  You can even put lights on the light stand!  Imagine that!  I also use them to clamp spoons to when I’m shooting soup shots.  The picture with Shui (a great food stylist) messing with the bowl gives you an idea of how I use the light stands.  For this one shot, I’m using 13 c-stands.  Many are out of the frame, so you can’t see everything I’m using them for. These stands come in different sizes and have different features.

There are black and silver stands and there is a version called the C+ stand that allows the column to be removed or replaced with a different height. (These are my favorites) 

Since I’ve bought these 30+ stands over time, I’ve ended up with all different kinds.  I prefer the Matthews, but the others work well too.   The problem arises when you try to mix the different brands in the same setup.  Many of the different manufacturers didn’t bother to try to match leg heights, so you end up with legs bumping into each other.  A real pain in the butt. 

So if you’re going to buy some of these things on ebay, make sure that the different stands you buy are compatible.  Even the same manufacturer (Matthews) did something really stupid.  For some reason, the last bunch of stands that I bought, had the order of the legs, arranged differently.  In other words, the if the highest leg is pointing at you, on the old stands, the medium leg is on the left, whereas on the new stands, the medium leg is on the right.  Go figure…

So if you’re thinking of becoming a REAL studio photographer, do yourself a favor and get some Century C-stands.  I’m telling you that you won’t regret it.  And you can do me a favor and get them from B&H by clicking on the banner ad on this page.  If you do, I get a little cut.  :+) (they have good prices too)