Flashpoint Dual Cold Shoe Extension

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Even in this day of working with ISO settings of 6400 and higher, you can still use some additional speedlight power when working on location.  For my own use, I use a 200 watt-second Godox AD-200 flash as my preferred location light source when I need lots and LOTS of power.

The double-speedlight thing and I go back a long way. Early on, I fashioned this twin-speedlight bracket using a short piece of aluminum channel stock and two Nikon AS-10 flash shoes. At the time, I still relied on the Nikon Creative Lighting System, so I needed to be sure the the sensor eyes were always pointing towards the on-camera controller. The system worked well enough, but as you can see, the bracket was a little bulky, and when you figure in the costs of two AS-10 flash shoes, relatively expensive. Subsequent iterations of this twin flash brackets would use less-expensive screw-tensioned cold shoes. My bracket had the disadvantage of occasionally unscrewing inside my camera bag, making for some frantic moments as I scrambled to find and reassemble the parts while my subject waited.

In contrast, the Flashpoint unit appears to be extruded from an extruded bar of what I assume is aluminum. This gives the unit both simplicity and rigidity, and is compact enough to easily stow itself in my increasingly crowded lighting bag. Notice that there is a threaded 1/4 x 20 threaded hole on both the front and back of the bracket. This allows the user to thread a like-threaded accessory into the front or back. In desperation, I can imagine threading a separate cold shoe in front to give me the total output of three speedlights. 

There are some cautions.  This would not be a good choice for direct lighting because each speedlight will cast its own shadow. This would normally not be an issue, but double and triple shadows are visible if the image is examined carefully.  This was less of an issue with my home-made unit, as I purposely mounted the two flash heads close together. But if used with an umbrella in shoot-through or bounce mode, you'll never notice. And it's a way in combine the power of two speedlights to create a single light source.