The 'Pro' Globe

While its certainly true you can slap on a home depot acrylic globe onto your alien bees or white lightning balcar mounts, it lacks a certain elegance and versatility, not to mention the fact that your flash tube is pretty close to the plastic. While you may not ever melt it, I’m one to be over cautious of my equipment and the flammable materials it comes near.

When I actually got my hands on a pro-globe, I was unimpressed by the hardware in relation to its price tag- approximately $300 for the globe or speedring separately. The globe has some nice holes drilled in it, and I’m sure it’s a special blend to be daylight balanced, but that’s about it. The speedring uses tension clips to hold on to the lip of the globe, putting a nice venting gap between the globe and speedring for added cooling.

I was convinced I could do better, for a fraction of the cost. It may or may not be daylight balanced, but it works, and with a very nice upgrade as well.

The original pro-globe is Profoto only. The DIY community, with a mix of lighting equipment and a desire to keep within a budget, is not the primary target of this modifier, thus the influx of modifiers that be used on nearly any type of light. My mod was created for all three kinds of lights I typically use: Alienbees/White Lightning, and my new Profoto Acute 1200 kit. I had just switched out some of the rings on my Alienbees soft boxes to be able to use them on my Profotos, when lightning struck and I figured if I can switch speedrings on those, why not on anything else that uses one?

Using a 12”, no-neck globe found on Amazon and a universal speedring from Calumet, I was able to buy the Profoto speedring insert that was the same size as the balcar inserts from the soft boxes. There were a dozen ways to attach the ring to the globe, most probably better than the one I chose, but drilling four 1/8th inch holes into the globe and threading 100lbs picture hanging wire to hold the ring on was what I ended up doing.

I gave myself a little slack on the wire to create that gap between the ring and globe, and ended up pinching the wires together using those hooks for hanging pictures (you’ll figure out that’s about the only materials I had). This made it so that there was no slop in that gap, so even if the mod is pointing upwards, the gap remains.

Using a 5/8” paddle bit, I promptly ruined my first globe by spinning all the way up and trying to jam it through. On the next globe, I very slowly started the hole, slowed down even more when the paddles hit the acrylic, and then spun up slowly as it began to eat up material.

The mod works best with the Profoto lights, and is what I basically plan on using it for. The adjustable depth you can get with the Profoto design lets you put the light deeper into the globe than the shallow balcar mount, though both work. The balcar mount lines up the flash tube almost even with the gap, creating a brighter line wherever that hits, but if you use the pro globe as a fill or main light up high, it won’t affect it at all.
So if you want to super deluxe your pro globe, here’s the shopping list

12” globe with 5.25” opening
Universal speedring
Alienbee/White lightning insert
Profoto insert

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