Duh! Moment: Umbrella Bracket

This should be of interest to Strobist readers. Some things are so obvious, you don't even think of them. This is pretty obvious to me—now, but I had to figure it out the hard way.

I had a "Duh!" moment a couple weeks ago when I figured out an alternate way of using umbrella brackets. Umbrella brackets are a good way to use flashes off camera, even if you're not using an umbrella. This little piece of equipment allows one to mount an umbrella and a small flash onto the top of a light stand. One end has a hotshoe mount for the flash, the other may have a brass stud, or it may just have an opening into which you can secure the light stand. Then you slide the shaft of the umbrella into the middle of the bracket (making sure the umbrella side points slightly upwards). In the middle of the bracket is a hinge with a rather large lever to tighten or loosen this hinge. The hinge allows one to adjust the angle of the flash so that it points into the center of the umbrella. In this configuration, you're stuck with the umbrella roughly horizontal, with a very slight angle upwards. But how often does anyone want to shoot with the umbrella horizontal? I usually prefer my light pointing at least slightly down onto the subject.

In order to be able to tilt the umbrella on the light stand, I screwed a ballhead onto the top of the light stand, and then screwed the umbrella bracket onto the ballhead. This worked the first time I did it, but not very well, and subsequent times I tried this method, it failed miserably. The ballhead is great, but it wasn't designed to take the kind of torsion this setup can generate. Just tap the umbrella and it becomes a giant lever, just dying to unscrew the bracket from the ballhead or the ballhead from the light stand. Then I realized, one need only switch the hotshoe mount to the other receptacle of the bracket, and you can easily tilt the umbrella! The flash might not line up perfectly, but at least you can tilt the umbrella. Alternately, the top of the umbrella bracket would be a much better place for a ballhead. Screw the hotshoe to the ballhead and screw the ball head to the brass stud. Then side the flash into the hotshoe mount and you can safely adjust the angle of the flash and the angle of the umbrella.