C-stand. Am I doing something wrong?

I did a shoot at home on studio over the weekend with a couple umbrellas and speedlights. One was on a normal stand, the other was on my c-stand. I just felt that adjustments weren't as fluid as I wanted and more of a struggle at times. I just used the single arm that came with it with a knuckle/grip at the end and a 6" pin attached to that. Attached to the 6" pin was my umbrella adapter. Things just felt clunky when repositioning / tilting. Should I invest in a boom arm? Does my configuration sound wrong?

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keep in mind that you have lots of pivot points on the stand, pin and bracket.

one trick i use is to raise one portion of the upright and lock it down, but leave the other part of the upright free. Like this you can swing the whole arm back and forth without unlocking/locking/relo​cking anything. My stand has a rubber gasket type thing where the upper riser meets the lower and that is enough to keep it stationary until you swing it.

other than that, i try to keep my bracket at a right angle to the rotation of the head. It looks like your bracket and head are on almost the same plane. Changing that might help a bit. As long as your pin is pointing up you can easily loosen the bracket and rotate it around the pin to give one more point of rotation.

finally, keeping the arm balanced with a counter weight, and maybe not quite so extended will help if you have to adjust the arm at the point it attaches to the stand. This is kind of a last resort and you obviously have to be careful your whole rig doesn't fall to the ground. I put one hand on the end of the arm where the bracket is, then gently loosen the other end to rotate the whole arm as needed. It's tricky though and definitely requires the arm to be balanced.

It is a bit clunky though.

You might try rotating your speed light 180 degrees so the weight hangs from the bottom of the arm. As shown, you are fighting gravity. Use gravity to your advantage. The speed light doesn't care, really.

so i starting thinking about it while gobbling down my lunch.

when i set up, i always have the small riser up higher than i think i need it, and the arm pointing down toward the light to get to the right height. This allows me to easily move the light down. If i need the light to move up or down, i always try to do it at the riser.

I also don't point the arm directly toward the subject. It is always just slightly in front of the stand and to the right or left. Going back to what I said above about leaving one riser lowered and not screwed down, i can then swing the light nearer/farther from the subject without totally changing the angle the modifier is pointing at the subject. The flash is easily accessible off to the side, and with the pin pointing up, you can adjust whatever change in angle comes from swinging the arm nearer/farther.

If the face of the modifier is pointing right at the subject, the arm is usually pretty close to parallel with that plane, whereas yours is totally perpendicular.

I have definitely had a few frustrating moments with this thing but seem to have figured it out. Until you asked, i had never really thought it all the way through, but it seems to be working.

I attached a pic of the head, pin, bracket set up i use. that might help you make sense of it if my description did nothing but confuse the situation.


edit: i used the word always a bunch, obviously all this flys out the window when the lighting set up gets more complicated.