Brian Michael had a question that I remember asking myself years ago when I was learning about flash photography, and that’s whether or not you can use multiple speedlights to replicate the power of a single studio strobe.

Here’s Brian’s question:

I do love my monolights and get great results from them.. But when going to remote locations and carrying gear myself.. its a bit much to handle with batt packs and doing solo shoots without assistance. what I would like is when traveling or exploring… to not have to bring my cumbersome monolights..

How many speedlights would = 1 monolight? I know it would depend on the watt second of the light.. but lets say 500ws

You can buy a 3 hotshoe/coldshoe bracket for speedlights.. so would 3+3 speedlights acting as a 2 monolight system with modifiers be enough to use in daylight conditions?

I know in studio, cloudy or other low light conditions they would be suffice… but in studio.. I would just use my monolights.. I would only incorporate my speedlights if I wanted to add more than 2 lights..

The short answer is sort of. See, adding multiple speedlights does increase the power of the light, but it increases according to the inverse square law, which complicates things a bit and ends up making it impractical to use multiple speedlights in place of a single strobe.

Check out the video for all the details and to see how quickly trying to do this can get out of hand.