The first thing to know about bird photography is that it’s hard. And the second thing to know is that you will need a long lens.

After many years of happy shooting with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 (and its Mark II upgrade) I’ve made the switch to the Fujifilm X-T4. It’s really more of a switch back because I shot a Fujifilm X-T1 immediately before the Olympus. So why the flip-flop?

After I settled on the right off-camera lighting system for me (Profoto), I needed to choose between Glow (an Adorama brand) and Profoto (specifically their OCF line) for a system of softboxes. As with the lighting system choice, I wanted a range of light modifiers that worked together and in the same general way so as not to complicate things by having to remember how each of a variety of different softboxes was assembled and adjusted.

For several years my battery-powered off-camera flash ‘system’ has been a mishmash of equipment. I had a matched pair of optically-triggered speedlights with TTL, a fully manual radio-triggered strobe (discontinued), and a fully manual radio-triggered speedlight (discontinued). My light modifiers were another collection of umbrellas and softboxes from various manufacturers assembled with little rhyme or reason. Clearly, I didn’t have much of a ‘system’ and it certainly wasn’t very modern. It was time for something better.