What Does That Look Like To You?

That flash head up there in the boom arm - is that an Elinchrom?

By golly, yes it is. It's one of the new Elinchrom D-Lite RX One heads. Looks like someone finally made a good system flash head that can go on the end of an arm - 'course you could always put things on the ends of boom arms, but with heavy flashes, the boom arm started to get heavier and the the support stand started to get heavier, and pretty soon you had the sort of thing that Cammel Laird used to put turrets on battleships...

No, the new RX One looks like the go. It seems to throttle down fairly low - 6 W/sec and can go up to 100 W/sec in 1/10 steps. That's enough power to shoot portraits in a small studio no problems - and what a great light source for the light cube style of product work.

Okay, it takes all the standard Elinchrom light shapers and whatever you can invent in addition*. You get a couple of shoot-through umbrellas in the two-head kit and a hard wide reflector. I'd opt for an additional 18cm wide reflector with the recessed rim and a couple of 18cm honeycomb grids. Great face and hair shots. Standard Super-Leuci modelling globes as well.

Looks like it comes equipped in each head for hard wire, infra-red, and radio triggering. They include one of the Skyport transmitters in the package.

Two stands, two travel bags. This is a good deal - about twice the power of the average portable speed light flash and lots of ready-made shapers for that light.

* Students - the best light shapers are made with gaffer tape and matt boards, with the occasional addition of a washed-out baked bean tin. If you have an Elinchrom speed ring you can make a light shaper out of a wheelie bin...