paul_duerinckx

<p>I use an Elinchrom Rotalux 135cm softbox and the metallic fabric close to the speed-ring is fraying a little. Later models (with grey piping on the outside skin of the box) are supposed to be more durable but this doesn't affect the performance of the softbox which, alongside the great design and versatility, is excellent.</p>

<p>True, the T4/T5s that work off the Turbo battery are 160 W/S compared to 400 for the X series. </p>

<p>Nadine is spot-on and I would second the overheating issue. This is prevalent with the Mk II especially with external power-packs such as Quantum Turbos and Lumedynes Cyclers. Because the flash recharges very quickly, even with 4 AAs, it tends to encourage rapid firing and therefore is more likely to overheat and cut out. It seems less a problem with my 580 Mk.1 (that takes about 20% longer to recycle). It could be a fault instead, but check the info about overheating in the manual; it may make sense of your problem.</p>

<p>The Elinchrom, with its adaptor, allows the use of a full range of Elinchrom modifiers whereas the Quantum is a bit more limited although you can get adaptors for Chimera and Photoflex softboxes. If you have a range of Elinchrom modifiers already and don't use TTL for off-camera use, the Quadra may be the better buy. Cost may also come into it. In the Uk for example, the Elinchrom, although not cheap, would work out significantly cheaper that an equivalent Quantum kit. Maybe this isn't the case in the US.</p>

<p>The Explorer is sold to run any mains flash unit and has been tested with many 500w/s units. In the UK, The Flash Centre are selling it to power the Elinchroms they import and technical advisors from Elinchrom in Switzerland have apparently visited Innovatronix to advise them so that they can recommend its suitability to power their monolights new and old. At some point I may well buy one for my EL500s. The compatibility list is on their aforementioned website.</p>

 

<p>Check out the Innovatronix Explorer XT (www.innovatronix.com/explorerXT.asp)<br />It is a pure sine wave inverter battery pack and can be purchased for 110 and 240v. It will power most lighting and other electronic products but check their website for compatibility. It costs about $389 US.</p>

 

 

<p>Check out the Innovatronix Explorer XT (www.innovatronix.com/explorerXT.asp)<br>

It is a pure sine wave inverter battery pack and can be purchased for 110 and 240v. It will power most lighting and other electronic products but check their website for compatibility. It costs about $389 US.</p>

<p>Hi Simone,<br>

I have not used the latest Bowens lights but have found previous versions pretty reliable. I have noticed that on Gemini Digital models a problem or two with the power supply is not uncommon. Modifiers certainly heat up but no more than most lights I've used and the life of modeling lights is pretty reasonable and you should get very good service out of your flash tubes. The throat of the bayonet is quite narrow so you just have to take care when changing modifiers.</p>

<p>My experience is based on ownership of Bowens lighting and also lecturing in a university that has Bowens lighting in the studio and a mixture of Bowens and Elinchrom for location. The Bowens equipment is, as you've noticed, very well made and the range of modifiers excellent. They offer very useful accessories such as the Travelite battery system. Many professionals use Bowens, especially in the UK, because of the quality (certainly in the mid-range) and accessibility of the equipment for sale and hire.</p>

<p>Having said this, I have recently bought new mains equipment and decided to go for Elinchrom. I have found their equipment to be as bullet-proof as any at this level. At the university, while we send off a Bowens head or two every year for repair, not a single Elinchrom head has ever needed repair and, since I started using it, I have been delighted with not only the standard of manufacture, but the light quality and colour consistency at different power levels. Ultimately I think you've made a good choice with Bowens, and it's a British company so well done in helping our balance of payments. If these lights work well, I wouldn't bother changing them.</p>

<p>The limit function controls undue influence from Spanish men, so whether it is useful or not depends on the circumstances of the shoot.</p>

<p>I've used it with Geminis. The older version of the Travelpak. The new one with interchangeable batteries and better ergonomics is a very useful accessory for the cost and the various updated Bowens monolights can all work with it, even the entry models . An inverter like the Innovatronix Explorer XT will provide more flashes for a similar cost but it's considerably larger and heavier than the Travelpak.</p>

<p>A meter is a good starting point. The Sekonics are excellent and it is useful to have both incident and reflected (narrow angle or true spot readings). However for shooting film at any shutter speed longer than a couple of seconds, a meter will not provide accurate results because all film exhibits, to varying degrees, reciprocity failure: as the exposure duration lengthens, the film becomes effectively less sensitive (as if the ISO is decreasing) and you will have to lengthen your exposures accordingly.</p>

<p>The amount varies with the film stock and the length of the exposure - if your meter indicates 5 seconds at say F11, the actual exposure may be 10 or 20 seconds at F11(a 1 or 2 stop difference). A meter indication at 1 minute may be okay at 4 minutes (still 2 stops) but may be 8 or 16 minutes. Some film manufacturers publish recommended adjustments for reciprocity failure. The alternative is that you choose your film and do some long exposure tests bracketing as you go. Experience is the best exposure meter. </p>

<p>As you have access to power, I would suggest studio flash heads with the modeling lights acting as your illumination but the flash ensuring sharp pictures with adequate depth of field. Hot lights are not ideal because you will be reduced to longish shutter speeds and/or high ISOs etc. With little or no ambient the light quality will matter so consider soft boxes (less susceptible outdoors to wind, more controllable and less distracting specular highlights). Speaking of specular highlights, a shiny black car will be difficult to light so watch the angle of the lights to avoid them reflecting in the paintwork or position them so that the (less specular) models block the reflections.</p>

<p>For ultimate versatility you need both, but brollies are the ideal start and will light everything from tight head shots to full length groups. Don't worry too much about power indoors with a D300s. The DX format offers more depth-of-field compared to a full frame camera and a doubling of power is, in effect, the same as doubling your ISO. You want to keep the ISO low but 200 to 400 ISO won't lose you much quality with a good, modern DSLR. Because brollies give such wide coverage, especially when translucent (either bounce or shoot-through), watch out for reflections off coloured surfaces that may colour the light falling on your subject. This is an instance of how the extra control of soft-boxes comes in handy.</p>

<p>Hi Junaid. 250 or 300 watt-seconds is fine for single portraits and small groups in a fairly small studio space. If the 500s aren't a great deal more, I would get those because they'll cover you in case you need an extra stop of depth of field or if you use them on location in a larger space or further from the group if you require a more gradual fall-off of light. </p>

<p>I don't know about the Visatec but the Elinchroms are excellent lights.</p>

<p>You've mentioned flagging to control spill onto the background. Perhaps the most important consideration when attempting to obtain a black background however, is control of fall-off. To achieve this affect with almost any background (even white!), you need to get your light source close to the subject and your subject as far from the background as possible. The ratio of distance from light-to-subject and subject-to-background is crucial: the greater this ratio, the darker the background. It is easy to test this by setting up a light, starting with the light say, further from the subject than the subject is from the background and noting how little fall-off there is from subject to background, and then gradually moving the light closer, re-meter, keep taking pictures and observe how the background is getting darker.</p>

<p>I use Elinchrom Skyports which are more than Ebay triggers but half the price of Pocket Wizards. They have a good range and are 100% reliable.</p>

<p>Another important consideration with the distance of the fill from your subject (and relative to the background) is that the further away it is, the more it will lighten your background. If you want to keep the background dark, get your fill light closer to the subject (if possible) to maximize the fall-off.</p>

<p>Hi William,<br>

I thought if you bought the kits, at the very least they would have come with spill-kills (reflectors that control spill when using brollies). If they didn't and you're starting from scratch, I suggest you buy 2 Elinchrom 18 cm reflectors (60º) because they function as spill-kills, general wide reflectors and they accept 18 cm grids. The 21 cm reflectors (50º) also accept grids but the coverage isn't as wide as the 18s and they are therefore not ideal as spill-kills. Although the 16 cms give an angle of 90º and are the standard spill-kill reflector, they are more limited for other purposes. The 18s could light your background too and with 60º coverage would be controllable enough for you to avoid light-spill on your subject.</p>

<p>Test it out by varying your shutter speed at and faster than the ambient light in a situation you envisage using this system and the results should confirm the best settings for your purpose.</p>

<p>Different modifiers will affect colour temperature. This is especially the case with diffusion and reflection (soft) modifiers. My Wafer softbox is warmer than direct flash even although the standard mylar screen has a bluish tint to correct this. And I should point out that when it comes to the quality of different systems (those mentioned) and their colour temperature consistency, Bron and Profoto are high-end and both Hensel and Elinchrom midrange in price, however, Elinchrom (I can't speak for Hensel) lights have excellent colour consistency across their power range.</p>

<p>The Bronica has leaf-shutter lenses meaning that there is no upper limit providing the flash duration isn't shorter than the speed you are shooting at. Useful if using flash outdoors when you want to underexpose the ambient light and can go up to 1/500 sec.</p>

<p>You need to be aware of the ambient light by taking an exposure reading. Say you're shooting at F8 for the flash. You measure the ambient at F8 and get say, 1/8 sec. If you maintain a higher speed on the camera, the exposure will be correct for flash (given the usual limitations) but under on the ambient. If you drop the shutter speed from say 1/125 toward 1/8 you will gradually introduce more ambient and this will give you more and more detail in the background and fill-in the lit foreground reducing the harshness of the exposure. If the ambient is a different colour temperature, this coloration will gradually creep in e.g., tungsten light on daylight film will bring in a strong yellow/orange cast in the background and a hint of this colour on your foreground although this will still be dominated by the 'correct' colour of the flash. Get within a stop of your chosen flash aperture (1/15) - 1 stop under on ambient - and you may get flash-blur with a moving subject or if the camera is moving. Go to 1/8 and your overall exposure will be slightly over because the flash is giving you F8 at 1/8 and the ambient is also giving F8 at 1/8. To correct this you could change your aperture to F11 at 1/8 and your ambient would now be dominant and the flash fill-in (-1 stop, 2:1 ratio), however if handheld, you would get more image blur. In other words, in the example I've given, your shutter speed range is realistically 1/15 and above depending on the amount of flash and/or ambient you want in the picture.</p>

<p>For a given ISO that you set on the flashgun's calculator dial, the orange setting should give a specific aperture, the green setting another aperture. You need to set the aperture on your lens to the aperture indicated by the orange or green setting, whichever suits your needs. Let's say that the orange setting indicates f8. You would set f8 on your lens, shoot and the exposure from about 1 metre up to the maximum distance should be correct. The auto settings work with a sensor that measures the light reflected back from the subject and will cover a range. You can use the flash manually but will have to use the right aperture for the camera (flash) to subject distance.</p>

<p>Unless it's a dedicated system, which in your case it isn't, it will not work properly on aperture priority. You will need to use manual exposure control either with the flash set to auto or manual. Aperture on the camera determines the flash exposure in conjunction with the flash setting on the flashgun. You can set a higher speed on the camera in order to gain a flash-dominated exposure or you can drag the shutter to bring some ambient light into the image.</p>

<p>Something that struck me about your post was the unavailability of Broncolor kit to test. If you have the option of hiring extra Profoto kit when you need it, but can't get Bron as easily, then this would seem to stack things in favour of Profoto. I assume also that if you have some monolights, you may already have an investment in Profoto-fit modifiers. You can see where this is going? Both systems are top end with great reputations and both are very expensive so you're in a very fortunate position to buy 'the best'. If I already had Profoto and was happy with it, I would continue to expand that system and I could use my monolights with all the same accessories. I think however, that your enquiry is entirely fair because when you are making an investment heading into five figures, it requires careful consideration. </p>

<p>In addition to what others have already said, you are getting a reflection of the light source in the black backdrop. Although when the overall image is correctly exposed this may improve, be careful about the position of the light, the distance of the subject from the backdrop, the angle of the light etc. You may need to finesse the set-up a little in order to get a solid black background and the quality of light you want on your subject. </p>