Elinchrom D-lite 2 studio flashes

Well I finally took the plunge following the SWPP trade show and bought myself an Elinchrom D-lite 2 kit from GW Digital and Photo who seem to be offering the best price for these lights that I could find anywhere.

The kit comprises of 2 x 200w D-lite studio flash heads, 2 x softboxes (one 65x65cm and the other 53x53cm), 2 x lighting stands, 2x sync and power leads, a DVD lighting guide and all fitted into 2 soft shoulder bags.

The lights were smaller versions of those I used on my studio portraiture course but should give plenty of power for the situations I'm planning on using them in.

I got them set up in the living room last night and gave them a quick testing. They were very easy to set up and in under 10mins I was ready to start shooting. I triggered them via my existing SB600 flash set on minimum power as the units have a slave sensor on them.

Once the settings on the flashes had been tweaked after a few test shots, I was very happy with the results in the short time I tried them. The immediate benefit of the digital controls is that the power of the units can be varied in 1/1oths of an f-stop to enable immediate and accurate settings to be made. I'll be having another go over the next couple of days so I'm fully prepared for another portrait session I'm doing on Saturday morning. Watch out for some shots taken with these over the next few weeks.

Got to get round to doing this more often!

Can't believe that it's been a couple of months since this was updated but it has been a busy couple of months for sure!

The latter part of last year was busy with quite few things photographic going on. In early November I went to the Nikon Expo in London and got to have a go on the new D300 at one fo the fashion shoots. The camera blew me away with it's capabilities and the way it handles noise at high ISO ratings. I was able to shoot without flash and just using ambient light at 3,200 ISO with very little noise appearing in the shots. You can see some of the results on my Flickr pages. One of the shots is shown below:

In December I did a portrait session with a good friend who had a 2 month old baby boy and wanted to get some photos for the family album. It was a good shoot, though attempts to keep a baby still in one place were certainly interesting!

Christmas has been and gone and the new year has been in full swing for the last few weeks.

I went to the SWPP trade show in Hammersmith last weekend where I picked up on lots of ideas for the future and got to see some hands on examples of dye sublimation printers which will certainly come in handy if I get into the event photography side of things. This is what I'm also considering following some very interesting talks at the Nikon Expo that I went to.