When working with strobes you’ll likely spend a ton of money on diffusers, only to have to buy a whole new set to work with any Speedlights you may have. While there are a few Speedlight to strobe softbox adapter solutions out there, such as the high quality ones made by Kacey Enterprises, these themselves will cost you a small fortune. Since I already use the Elinchrom Quadra adapter to allow my full size Elinchrom diffusers to work with the Quadra heads, I was curious if there is a way for me to use my Speedlight without having to shell out any more money. Sure enough there was a fairly simple and surprisingly sturdy way to do this using the Quadra adapter and a Manfrotto Justin Clamp (as pictured above). If you don’t already have a Justin Clamp then I highly recommend getting one as it literally has 1001 uses. If you have a Manfrotto Magic arm already then you can fashion something even sturdier.

The approach is simple, mount the diffuser to the Quadra Adapter, put the adapter on a light stand and clamp the Justin Clamp to the Quadra Adapter and tilt the flash head down as much as it will go. The rest can be seen in the above diagram.

Even with the Justin clamp, the flash felt well secured to the stand and can be triggered either by the slave cell or a Pocket Wizard or any other type of wireless solution. The quality of light is the same as from a Quadra head albeit much weaker. As expected, you’re limited in the size of diffuser you can use, so a 70″ Octa is likely out of the question. It does however work nicely with a small strip light or 24″ Octa or softbox. I’ve also tested it with reflectors like a beauty dish, snoot and grids and all gave good results. For me this will serve as a useful solution for in studio fill light if I run out of strobes or need a low power flash.