Is This My New Favorite Light?

A Review of the Stella Pro Reflex

Steve BrazillJune 1, 2023

A few years ago I was walking around the WPPI Expo floor with a friend, when he suggested we stop by the StellaPro Lights booth. This friend does some work with StellaPro Lights, a division of Light & Motion, and he thought I might be interested in seeing their new product – the StellaPro Reflex. As the staff there showed me the lights, I immediately thought that these might be a game changer for some people – maybe even me.

Since then, I’ve been able to see the lights, and meet the people from StellaPro a few times, including at NAB 2022. Every time, I was struck by how kind the staff were, and how passionate about this product they were. Yeah, they’re supposed to be passionate about their product while showing it at a conference, but this felt so honest to me. While I was handling these lights it felt like I was holding something different than any other light I’ve played around with… in a very cool way.

If you’re not familiar with the StellaPro Reflex, let me summarize for you. The StellaPro Reflex is a “Continuous Strobe Hybrid”, meaning it does both Constant Light or Digital Burst. These LED lights allow you to do constant light like any LED, and I am not talking about a simple modeling light like you have in a standard studio monolight. These are constant LED lights suitable for video use. The Digital Burst mode allows you to use the lights like you would a flash, but these are not flashes. Again, they are LED lights, but they allow you to charge the LED and release all of that charge as a burst of light, a burst that can be up to 1 stop brighter than the constant light. Hopefully the phrase “Continuous Strobe Hybrid” makes a bit more sense now.

After meeting the StellaPro Lights folks, they offered to send me some of the gear for a review, and I jumped at the chance. They ended up sending me a 2 Light Kit, including 2 Stella Pro Reflex S lights
along with various accessories and cables, and today we are going to put them to use.

I do want to make a few things clear for this show…

This is an honest, unsponsored review.

The Stella Pro Lights I’m using in this show were sent to me by Stella Pro Lights (and Light & Motion) for the purpose of this review, but this is not a paid ad. I am free to have and state any opinions I have, and Stella Pro doesn’t get to see this before it goes live.

Also, If you want a crazy technical review – that’s not me.

I’m not going to measure actual Kelvin, CRI, and TLCI, etc. If you want technical reviews on any gear, I’d suggest checking out Photo Joseph, Curtis Judd, Gerald Undone, or one of the many people that do that way better than I ever could. I don’t know if any of those YouTubers have reviewed these lights, but they do great content.

What I want to see is how these lights work for someone like me. I’m not a person that uses constant light or flash daily. I am a concert photographer. I do shoot Meet & Greets, Portraits and Promos, but I don’t normally use studio type lights. I have been able to get by on my Canon Speedlights, and even then I’m not a person that uses constant light or flash daily.

So, these are just my opinions based on how I shoot.

This show will divided into 3 parts: Getting to know the gear, the unboxing and gear details, and shooting with lights. Finally, I’ll close it out with my thoughts.

Join me for a review of the StellaPro Lights Reflex S, and let’s see if I have a new favorite light, on this Behind the Shot.