Comments about Photoflex Photoflex StarFlash 650 Mercury 5' OctoDome Kit with One StarFlash 650ws Monolight, 5' OctoDome3, Connector, 8'2" LiteStand, & Large Case with Wheels:

The strobe is great actually it's amazing. The Recycle time isn't horrible I hardly notice it. I'm so happy that I can shoot with small apertures. The stand is heavy and strong with a wide footprint, I actually didn't need sand bags but I suggest that you have at least one just incase. The bag is nice I think I might of gotten one of the older ones only because it doesn't look as nice as the ones on the photoflex website but o well. The octobox is amazing but be prepared for a struggle if you have never set up soft boxes before. The octobox provides great diffusion and I am so happy that I got it.

Comments about Photoflex Photoflex StarFlash 650 Mercury 5' OctoDome Kit with One StarFlash 650ws Monolight, 5' OctoDome3, Connector, 8'2" LiteStand, & Large Case with Wheels:

I'd used Photoflex hot lights and softboxes for many years, so I was pretty confident that the Starflash was going to be a well designed and built product. I wasn't disappointed. It's met every expectation.

Photoflex seems to go the extra mile in creating quality merchandise and the Starflash and Octodome are no exceptions. Both are extremely well built. While I also have a 3' Octodome and a Startflash 300, the Starflash 650 is powerful enough to use effectively with a simple reflector arrangement for fill and hairlight. The location of the slave recievers seems to be a good design feature, since I haven't had any failures in firing from the on-camera flash.

One feature that I REALLY appreciate with the Octodome is the ability to change the interior to either a gold or silver reflective surface to add warmth or punch, respectively. I whole-heartedly recommend both the Starflash and the Octodome.

The image included with this review is straight from the camera - no post processing except to to create the 100% crop and size reduced sample of the full image.