the it factor
There was a time when one flash wireless trigger and two receivers would have cost you £300. Now you get all this plus the flash, remote power control, stands, lightshapers, gig bags – all with Elinchrom D-Lite it kits from £460.
T
he D-Lite it kit follows from the original D-Lite “to-go” philosophy, with a variety of kits. The review system I opted for was a D- Lite it 4/4 kit with softboxes - a retail price of only £550 including VAT. Configurations can be flexible, but the most likely sellers are going to be the asymmetric D-Lite it 2/4 two-head umbrella kit at under £460, or this 2x D-Lite it 4 kit. Since I began this review, The Flash Centre have added some model packages including the Innovatronix Explorer power pack – a rechargeable inverter kit that gives you mobile power for about 300 flashes. These power packs alone retail for just under £400, so there are small savings to be had by buying the bundles together for £799-899 depending on kit.
Currently The Flash Centre are also offering “try before you buy” rental deals, with a D-Lite it 2 kit available on 7-day hire for £35 all in.
The original D-Lite evolved from the model we initially reviewed in 2007, gaining fans in a mid-life revision to improve performance in hotter coun- tries (my original set never had a problem with cooling), and this it version carries on the evolutionary process by adding wireless triggering.
The kits include stands with quick, flip-style locks and easy to assemble softboxes; these don’t have the rotating adjust- ment of the Rotalux boxes but are much easier to pack away and store in the two cases that carry the complete kit (one case carries the heads, power cables and mounting rings for the softboxes, the other part is more like a bag and carries the stands and folded modi- fiers). The user interface is the familiar Elinchrom membrane
MASTER PHOTOGRAPHY 46
button layout with a bright LED to display the power setting; the buttons are now round and also used to access Skyport settingsl. Physically the basic size and shape of the D-Lite it is very similar to the original - yet it’s a totally new design, with a stronger tilt head and bracket carrying the 7mm centred umbrella support as before, whilst adding support for bigger shafts. The handle is now rubber coated and larger, with a spare fuse carried inside it, and the locking bayonet mounting ring now supports Rotalux softboxes up to 135cm (partly due to the stronger tilt bracket). Electroni- cally, the news is all good - the slave cell can be programmed to ignore TTL pre-flash bursts from digital SLR cameras (or if you’re finding your AF assist lamp is triggering, or anti-red-eye can
not be cancelled); and the big news is support for EL-Skyport built in including 1/250th speed synch with the new EL-Skyport Speed or Eco. The Eco model is included in the To-Go kits, and offers triggering on four chan- nels.
For advanced users the
D-Lite it has selectable groups and frequencies like any other Skyport flash, albeit limited to four frequencies and four groups rather than the eight frequen- cies on the earlier Skyport sys- tems – as such it makes a good auxiliary or back lighting set at a low cost, integrating into existing BXRi or Style RX setups perfectly, particularly for uses where power adjustment and full remote control are rarely or never needed.
Unchanged from the first D-Lite kit, power is adjustable in
1/10th increments, from 25Ws to 400Ws on the 4, and 12Ws to 200Ws on the 2 – for those users pondering how that com- pares to an on-camera flash, maximum Guide Numbers of 211 and 149 respectively. Recycling times are 0.2s to 0.6s on the 200Ws model, and essentially slightly less than double on the 400Ws. Aas always, the laws of physics win when it comes to flash design. Durations are 1/1200 and 1/800 for 2 and 4 respectively. The tube is the 5500K S-tube that delivers the consistent results I’m already very used to with Elinchrom; the modelling lamp has proportional control.
In several months of oc- casionally intense use, I haven’t had the fans cut in on my set – a welcome feature when my original Style 100 (used for backlighting product shots) sits happily whirring away under the Elinchrom Still-Life Table re- gardless of how hard it’s work- ing. Whilst I’m not about to give up my RQ for the new D-Lite + Innovatronix bundles if I were looking at a kit from scratch, it would be very compelling hav- ing this power in a mobile form as well for £400 less. However - as with the original D-Lite, the real benefit of this system is the balance of “budget” and “pro features”; for less than the cost of an additional Speedlight and a battery pack you get a good, serious looking studio setup – something high-speed “strob- ists” tend to overlook when wanting to expand their system for studio/portraiture work. If that sounds familiar from my last review, I don’t apologise – the D-Lite IT kit adds features and build quality, costs less, and performs exceptionally well. – Richard Kilpatrick
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