Spotlight On Value - Elinchrom

Oyez Oyez Oyez. All ye who have Elinchrom studio strobe kits draw night and give heed.

Sometimes you need to draw attention to a studio subject in no uncertain terms. Painting them with fluoro orange and suspending them from the ceiling can do it but required more of a supporting structure than you may be able to manage - at least in the average living room. Bedroom, maybe, but...

A better ruse is to spotlight the subject - and the spotlight is something of a rarity these days. You can still get the hot light variety - go google up Mole-Richardson and marvel at the 20th century appearance of the light unit and the 22nd century appearance of the price. Hollywood might have been cheap but it was never inexpensive.

For those using Elinchrom studio lights there is a better way - the Mini Spot Lite attachment. It bayonets right on there like all the other light modifiers do. And then you get to play a lot more with it than you do with the standard bowl reflectors or grids. The Mini Spot Lite has an optical system built in.

The central tube of the Mini Spot has a focussing lens  - it is slid back and forth manually but can be locked into place with a thumb screw. It literally focuses the light of the flash to a certain plane out in front of the strobe - the same way a slide projector focuses upon a screen. It can focus plain light for a small round spot, or...

Or you can interpose a diaphragm in the correct optical point in the light path and have the Mini Spot project an image of that diaphragm. The gate is loaded with a two-part filter holder that sandwiches a circular plate in position. Elinchrom provide metal plates with some fun patterns laser-cut into them. There are two window patterns, a tree pattern, and a plain spot. You can easily cut additional diaphragms in whatever pattern you require - I made stars, crescents, and reverse spots myself. Your limited only by your imagination.

If you project the spot onto a backdrop you can give  a Hollywood feel to a set. You can project pattens on people. You can put moons and suns in the sky. If Hurrell could do it...you can.

Lights. Camera. Action.