Elinchrom announces new D-Lites

Recently Elinchrom announced the revamping of its D-Lites - the entry level strobes used by photographers around the world.  The Elinchrom name is synonymous with quality, and usually high cost I find as I talk to other photographers - or that's the perception.  That hasn't been my experience, though.

I have seen now three models of D-Lites over the years:
1) the initial offering - a simple, self-contained flash head,
2) the updated offering which then included cooling fans (I use these in the Brampton MCI studio and have for a while), and now
3) the most recent iteration with a more solid mount, stronger handle, intelligent cooling, and radios - built in!!
Each time the product is refreshed, important new features are added - and this time - it's off the chart.

Let me tell you why:

The D-Lites are small, lightweight, relatively inexpensive, and when bought in a "kit" (image on the right) provide tremendous value in that they come with two lightweight travel bags, two lights, two soft boxes, two stands, flash tubes, modelling lamps, protective caps for the lights,  temperature controlled fans (they aren't on unless they need to be on), and control over light output in 1/10ths of a stop.  All this for two 400 watt second (and I believe that to be real watt seconds - not marketing watt seconds) strobes that you can attach ANY Elinchrom (or Elinchrom knock-off) accessory to - and this is for under $1,000 CAD.  

I have used the second generation D-Lites for about two years now and they have been pretty flawless.  I have used them with analogue sync cords and with radio transmitters and receivers and they work brilliantly.  Most photographers I know use Pocket Wizard transmitters and that's fine - although a pair is $400+ (the Elinchrom equivalent units are half the price and 1/6 the size - both good things, because as you know - I like to travel light).  You only need a pair because with one on your camera and one connected to one light, the other light(s) can leverage the built in optical sensor (white dome on the right of the back panel) and fire when they see a flash.  This method allows you to synch with speeds up to about 1/200th of a second consistently.  However, when I put an Elinchrom receiver on the back of two lights I was easily syncing consistently at up to 1/320th of a second.

With the new kits just announced, you have radio receivers BUILT IN!  This means you connect power... and GO!  The kit also includes a basic transmitter that tells the strobes when to flash when it is slide onto your hot-shoe.  This is the kind of feature you see in lights that are $800 a piece, and provide exceptional functionality and ease of use for a busy photographer. If you step up to (or already have) the Elinchrom full featured EL-Skyport transmitter, then you can break your lights up into groups, and (imagine this in entry level strobes) have lights on the background, lights on a model, and lights on hair and props  - all managed independently (in 10th of a stop increments) from the little transmitter on top of your camera.  This sort of control was a dream only a couple years ago - and here it is in entry-level kit.

To put a little context around what 400 watt seconds means, the backs of the D-Lites have a digital read out that measures output on a scale of 2.0 to 6.0, incremented in 1/10ths of a stop.  So the range is four full stops.  In my studio with my largest softbox (10 and a half square feet of light) I have never had my lights up higher than 4.0, so I have two more full stops of light to go - should I need them.  MORE than enough power for a someone shooting in a small studio, and way too much power if you are only going to be doing portraits.

Word to the wise (clearly not me), when I went to Vistek and was talking to John B at their Mississauga store he told me that I might not want the 400 w/s lights, because they wouldn't come down in power enough for an in-home studio.  I thought to myself - I think for the $100 more than the 200 w/s kit I should get the 400 w/s strobes because more power is better power.  Hmmmm....  Hindsight, being 20/20, I should have listened to John's advice, because these lights only go as low as they go.  The 400 w/s kit is $999, but a 200 w/s kit (identical except for the amount of output - one stop less) is $899.  The choice is yours.

So why the D-lites and not Alien Bees?  A couple differences would be the 10/th of a stop control over output and the integrated radio slaves, and different and large array of light modifiers from and for Elinchrom.  Elinchrom would argue that the colour temperature of the strobes is more consistent and that  all their lights are CSA certified for Canada whereas the Bees aren't (or weren't last time I looked).  If you are working professionally you might need to look at this.  For me the choice was simple - I could hop in the car and drive to a Vistek and purchase the lights, the accessories, replacement bulbs... and not worry about shipping, duties... etc.  The 400 w/s kit ($999 CAD) compared to the similar Alien Bees plus three pocket Wizards ($1490 USD + shipping and duties)... That's made really easy by this recent announcement from Elinchrom.

Why the D-lites and not some of the more beefy (and pricey) Elinchrom lights?  Cost was certainly a factor, but Elinchrom said that their D-Lites are capable of anything their more expensive brethren are - "just don't ask them to work as hard".  In my experience, though, I can tell you that in creating the images for the Karina video we shot over 1,600 images in under two hours.  We did five outfit changes in that same two hours as well, so when we were shooting - we really worked those lights hard.  Those lights have also been coast to coast in Canada for shoots in conference rooms and hotels, and I have been really pleased with how they have stood up.

So a new set of lights with better fan, better mount and built in radios with included transmitter and built-in receivers for under $1,000?  That's a sweet deal.

Latest Sharable

One can't share every shoot*, and it would be pretty boring I think if one did, but I did a shoot last week with a new model who had only done two shoots previously.    She did a great job, took some risks, took direction well, and the results... well - look above. She also provided wardrobe and did the makeup herself.  On my side I provided a little coaching during the session and moved lights and backgrounds around.  And a thousand images later and a fair bit of post production time - here we are - the best in under a minute and a half.  Enjoy!
____________
* As an example - I did a shoot last month for a new product that won't be announced
until April, so... I can't share everything - but sometimes wish I could.  :-(

Around the Studio Part II

Last post I showed around the office, which while important to me, might not be too exciting for folks wanting to check out how I work when behind the camera, so this post is dedicated to the larger room I shoot in.

Firstly - it is long.  46 feet (14m), to be exact.  And, for a full length portrait you need some length.  If you don't have length, you need to use a wider setting, and below 50mm you start to distort the image - faces start to look funny. I didn't believe this at first, but now I get it intuitively.  I notice all the time on amateur photographer's sites that sometime the faces are distorted, but not on purpose - they just ran out of space. 

So I am really lucky - this shot of the lovely LU6 (as she goes by) was taken with me far enough back to not distort the image, and yet I could have easily moved back another 15 feet (5m) or more.  So, how do you do this in a basement shooting area?  First trick is distance.. so we have that covered here.

Second trick is height - more of a challenge.  So to get EVERY inch of height out of this space I put the seamless rolls right into the ceiling, with the rolls between the joists.  You can see in these images that a box was built to house two rolls and the box is flush with where the drop ceiling will be.  (BTW, that's three layers of Roxul Safe and Sound insulation you see to keep the noise down while we are shooting with the tunes on) (sometimes I'll dance around while shooting, but since I'm essentially in the dark it isn't as disgusting as you might think).  ;-)  As you can see from the second image the seamlesses are inside the white box, and the box is flush with the tracking for the dropped ceiling.

So now go back to the image at the top and you can sort of make out the box, but the seamlesses are hidden away.  I assure you they are there, though.

Once you have a place to hide your seamless backgrounds, then you can drop them down and move in your lights.  In this image you can see the roll of white seamless has started to come down, and I have put black material along the right hand wall to absorb light spill from the strobes.  Cheap and highly effective particularly when you are shooting with a dark background.  My most used stands for lights and reflectors are on wheels, but more on my lights in the next post.

To get a really black background, managing spill or bounce from your strobes is imperative, and the only way to get a black background is to deal with the walls.  So the lovely image of LU6 above was actually much less glamourous when you back up and see what was actually involved.  Not sure if you can tell in this image but LU6 is standing a good 10 feet (3m) from the black background which also allows you to separate the model from what's being used for a background. So many photographers miss this and while it isn't such a big deal with black, it IS a big deal with lighter backgrounds and leads to ugly (in my opinion) shadows unless you wanted them for artistic purposes.

Lastly, once you have done some work and you want to show the work to the client, you need a place to sit and view things.  While my office is fine for me, it is not necessarily appropriate for a client, so we have the nice couch and projector so that images can be viewed quite large... like how is a 107" screen?

OK - What about lights and reflectors and modifiers and....

Next time.

  

Around the MCI studio (Pt. 1)

Do you get the feeling you are being watched?
I walk into the office at MCI and I am immediately stared at by Lovina... one big green eye on me as I pass by to get the desk. Then Jennifer is looking over my shoulder all the time - making sure I have done all of my Post Production properly and that nobody has blemishes or too many stray hairs in their images.  Heather and Amanda are on the floor but are about to be hung up.

This is the view that Jennifer has over my shoulder...of my desk(s).  A 17" monitor is on the left, 24" iMac in the middle and a 28" Samsung on the right.  The latter is connected to the iMac and used all the time when doing Post in Aperture.  As you can see (on the middle screen) I have thumbnail images from a shoot,  a single selection from them above, and then the image (fitted) on the full screen to the right.  Of course you can zoom in after that.  I do my touch ups largely on the Samsung, but it is not calibrated - the iMac is.

On the extreme left is a Drobo with backups of all my stuff (4 TB Raw), and a firewire 1TB drive in the back between the left and centre screens, a LaCie 1 TB drive under the middle screen, and a bunch more external diskage not shown.

So why, you might ask, is there all this external storage?  Two reasons:
1) Some projects are genuinely huge.  Some shoots are 2,000 images, and then at 20 MB a piece raw from the camera that's 40 GB without any Post at all.  One of the reasons I LOVE Aperture is that I can take an image, make four versions of it, all messed with a bit differently, and the 20 MB file is now 20.08 MB in four files.  Lovely!  However, even though I treat is as a mere 'plug-in', sometimes Photoshop is required, and now that 20 MB file is a 200 MB file for each version.
2) Some projects are confidential (for a variety of reasons) - so those shoots are never loaded directly onto my main machine, and never is the appropriate hard disk connected when the Mac is also connected to a network.  That might be a little paranoid, but having been in IT for more than two decades I am well aware of what CAN happen if you let it - so why let it?

If you looked carefully in the first image and wondered why I have an audio mixer over my left shoulder, it is because sometimes I mix audio here.  For the podcasts I have done since 2007 all the music and sounds effects were done by me since I couldn't be bothered to find "the perfect" music from someone else and then worry about licensing.  What you can't see is the pair of Yamaha NS-20s (very big brother to the ubiquitous Yamaha NS-10s used in just about every recording studio in the world in the 80s and 90s) on the far wall.  Between the screens and the audio system...  I can spend many, many hours happily working away.

But what about the studio space and photography gear?    Coming up.

MCI 2009 Favs/Fun Images

Truth be told, I had a ton of fun making images last year.  A lot of it was 'work' or 'experimentation', but I tried to have fun, and I think I did.  The video below is a collection of some of the more fun, favourite, or at least differently interesting for me.  In the studio, in City Hall, in Vancouver, in my backyard here in Brampton - all of these are memorable in different ways.

I would love to show you my favourite image from 2009... but there's just no way to pick one.  Or even two.
Here'a a bunch - see what you like!

I am looking forward to 2010.

Traveling Light

I thought I might cover off one of the tools I use that allows for very light weight and smallness to do a remote photoshoot.  I found myself doing a remote… very remote shoot recently in cramped quarters (small hotel room) and needed to be able to travel light to get my gear there.  The shoot was going to be on the other side of the country  - Vancouver… did you know that from Toronto one can fly to London, as fast or faster than to Vancouver? I had a pretty good idea in my head of what I wanted - two sets of images - one set with available light, and one set more studio-like. I needed to take two strobes, softbox, reflector, grid, stands, backdrop, etc… in one suitcase, AND it had to be under 50 lbs. for the airline to accept it.  Up for a challenge?

As it turns out I tend to use the Elinchrom D-Lite strobes anyway which are very small and lightweight as 400 w/s strobes go.  The softbox I used for this shoot was pretty small, too (26"x26"), but then so was the space I was going to be shooting in.  A grid and reflector are small and lightweight, and the black background was handled by a black king-sized bed sheet.

Aside from camera gear, lens, triggers, etc,  the only remaining issue was light stands.  The light stands I use in the studio are over 30 lbs each and way too big to fit in a normal suitcase.  My light-weight aluminium stands were also too long for a suitcase, although maybe in a larger suitcase you would be OK.  Seems I was really going to need a compact light stand - and WOW - did I find a winner!

The Manfrotto 5001B is very compact - you can see it here relative to my iPhone.  Folded up it is only 19" long, but it is also pretty lightweight (less than a kilo, or ~2lbs).  These are both good things, but what's more interesting is the way it expands.  The Manfrotto literature says that it expands up to 6 feet in length, but in the image on the left you can see that I extended it more than that (10' ceiling) by having the legs angled the way I did - not always recommended for stability, but....   I did measure and the shaft of the stand, and fully extended it is about 6' - just seemed like a lot more with the strobe and the softbox.

(Left - Fully extended with a flash head and softbox on, and right fully collapsed - except for the legs)

As you can see this tiny light stand handled the flash head and softbox without any issue, and during the shoot it was repositioned many times without it feeling too flimsy even when extended to the ceiling (and it was since it was being used as a hair light a lot of the time on a model who stood 5'9" I would guess).

The result then is a highly flexible, small-but-expanding-to-large, very lightweight stand, and part of a successful shoot which didn't require special cases to transport. YEAH! The Manfrotto 5001B is a great addition to your travel kit.  And based on this image from the shoot - it clearly did its job.

Holy Halloween Images, Batman!

I just looked at the stats on my archive site around the TheThriller halloween party images I captured and while I have sold a number of images both as prints and as downloads, I have had over 3,000 impressions.
OK - I am blown away by that. A lot more than I figured I might get.


I am so happy I thought I would inflict upon you an image of me, the artist at work (er... not really), between two of the loveliest participants in the evening.  There are really nice images of both these ladies on the archive, and the 'flapper-girl' had the most fun of anyone I captured images of that evening.  I don't remember how many images we made together, but it was a LOT - and it was fun because she was into it and while fooling around got into all these different poses - just being silly.

BUT... that's not the real story here.

A question may have occurred to you by now... since I said I was working handheld in my last post.... and I didn't take a tripod... how did this image get taken?

These two lovely ladies had another female friend who really didn't want her picture taken (although she got talked into it), but she insisted that I get my picture taken with her friends. And that she do it.  Now. Which she did, and obviously did a lovely job of it!  (that's as good as I am ever gonna get, folks)

Now their friend, the other photographer, is pictured here and is the one that didn't want to get her image captured...  the shame of it all!  Their male friend was also cute, but not so much my type.  :-) So by rights I should be giving credit to her for the image above....  but I don't know her name.

Come on people.  Help a guy out!