Bowens, Elinchrom, Lencarta or Elemental?

[Dr_O]

Hi

looking to step up to using studio lights now- have looked at a few- the trinity series, elite pro, BXRi and Gemini to give you an idea but don't really have enough experience in lighting to say whether the difference in price gives better results. I know where I stand with lenses from Nikon and other manufacturers but not so sure with this lighting carry on. Having said that I only use Nikon flashes

I was thinking of approx 600W, probably 3 lights to give my flexibility for a variety of shots, ability to connect up to a battery for use outside, remote triggering to avoid as many cables. Would be going with softboxes although I think that's an aside here.

From Bowens, these requirements are pretty costly- do you really get what you pay for here?

The trinity lights from elemental aren't really that cheap although can't really see much said about them (independently). They so seem good or should I be looking at 3 400W lights from the genesis elemental range? Surely you can never have too much power?

Another query- regards are ther 3rd party options for Elinchrom- always see reference to expensive accessories although compared to Bowens themselves don't see much of a difference. The only downside for Elinchrom is that you would currently have to get the Ranger to use a battery pack although I would have thought you could plug the BXRi lights into something like the Innovatronix battery no probs?

Hopefully some of that makes some sense as i'm badly multi-tasking

 

[Garry Edwards]

Don't get too hung up on power, unless you're doing complex still life setups or if you're shooting in a very large space. The difference between 600Ws and 300Ws (from the same manufacturer) is just 1 stop, and if you only need 600Ws on an occasional basis then simply increasing the ISO from 100 to 200 will take care of that problem, and if you have a modern DSLR the loss of image quality will be hard to detect. If you're comparing 300Ws from 1 supplier to 600Ws from another you may see very little real difference at all.

I see no advantage in 400Ws compared to 300Ws. The difference is insignificant.

Any flash head of any make can be used with radio triggers, and should be.

Another query- regards are ther 3rd party options for Elinchrom- always see reference to expensive accessories although compared to Bowens themselves don't see much of a difference.

There isn't much difference in price between Elinchrom & Bowens accessories, the real difference is that there are far more light shapers available in the Bowens fit, which gives you a lot of choice from different sources, usually at somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3rd of the cost of Bowens. There are now quite a few accessories available from '3rd party' manufacturers for Elinchrom too, but most of them are well below the standard of the Elinchrom products. That is likely to change in the future though.

What you should really be looking at is actual, real world performance, not at statements made by sellers. The better makes have high sales volumes and so there are plenty of reviews available. What matters is consistent colour temperature, consistent flash energy, high quality componants, good build quality, fast recycling - not fancy cases, LCD displays, remote control (however nice it is to have it, it doesn't produce better results) etc.

You can plug any flash head of any make into one of these battery packs, basically the packs are just heavy car batteries fitted with an inverter - but recycling time will suffer and you won't get many flashes to a charge. The ideal answer is to use mains powered flashes where you have mains power and battery powered flashes where you don't. A reasonable analogy might be an estate car - you can use it as a car and you can use it as a van, but it's a pretty poor van and it doesn't handle as well as a sports car.

 

[david1701]

bowens/elinchrom are higher tier lights than lencarta/elemental

If you want the ability to run remotely then you need to be looking at bowens travelpack vs elinchrom ranger lights. The alternative is a battery-mains system like the invotronix xplorer which will work on any mains head (or laptop or whatever)

lencarta make the safari but it won't run off mains power (though Garry will confirm that) so while nice location kit is limited for studio use


if remote working wasn't an issue I'd buy the trinity lights, if oyu intend to work remotely occaisionally you could cosider renting other s fit lights (its a standard modifier from bowens but used by many other brands) or use an invotronix

 

[Dr_O]

Don't get too hung up on power, unless you're doing complex still life setups or if you're shooting in a very large space. The difference between 600Ws and 300Ws (from the same manufacturer) is just 1 stop, and if you only need 600Ws on an occasional basis then simply increasing the ISO from 100 to 200 will take care of that problem, and if you have a modern DSLR the loss of image quality will be hard to detect. If you're comparing 300Ws from 1 supplier to 600Ws from another you may see very little real difference at all.

I see no advantage in 400Ws compared to 300Ws. The difference is insignificant.

Any flash head of any make can be used with radio triggers, and should be.

There isn't much difference in price between Elinchrom & Bowens accessories, the real difference is that there are far more light shapers available in the Bowens fit, which gives you a lot of choice from different sources, usually at somewhere between 1/2 and 1/3rd of the cost of Bowens. There are now quite a few accessories available from '3rd party' manufacturers for Elinchrom too, but most of them are well below the standard of the Elinchrom products. That is likely to change in the future though.

What you should really be looking at is actual, real world performance, not at statements made by sellers. The better makes have high sales volumes and so there are plenty of reviews available. What matters is consistent colour temperature, consistent flash energy, high quality componants, good build quality, fast recycling - not fancy cases, LCD displays, remote control (however nice it is to have it, it doesn't produce better results) etc.

You can plug any flash head of any make into one of these battery packs, basically the packs are just heavy car batteries fitted with an inverter - but recycling time will suffer and you won't get many flashes to a charge. The ideal answer is to use mains powered flashes where you have mains power and battery powered flashes where you don't. A reasonable analogy might be an estate car - you can use it as a car and you can use it as a van, but it's a pretty poor van and it doesn't handle as well as a sports car.

Hi Garry

Thanks for that- interesting what you say about the flash output. Sounds like I should perhaps be aiming for around 300W and save a fair bit of cash.

Consistent temp is important and if brands like Lencarta, Elemental etc can achieve that I have no problem with the logo.

What exactly is stepless power adjustment? Some lights say 5 stop stepless adjustment so assuming a step isn't a stop as it has no steps

Like the analogy- same with most things I guess, jack of all trades and master of none

 

[Dr_O]

bowens/elinchrom are higher tier lights than lencarta/elemental

If you want the ability to run remotely then you need to be looking at bowens travelpack vs elinchrom ranger lights. The alternative is a battery-mains system like the invotronix xplorer which will work on any mains head (or laptop or whatever)

lencarta make the safari but it won't run off mains power (though Garry will confirm that) so while nice location kit is limited for studio use


if remote working wasn't an issue I'd buy the trinity lights, if oyu intend to work remotely occaisionally you could cosider renting other s fit lights (its a standard modifier from bowens but used by many other brands) or use an invotronix

I was trying to cover all bases with remote working so it would definately be occasionally although always nice to have the option to do it on a whim.

Did have a look at the bowens travelpack. I guess at the moment I'd maybe lower my priority on the location stuff and solve that problem when the need arises and stick to mains lights just now.

 

[Garry Edwards]

My advice would be to stick with mains powered lights (if that's what you mostly need them for) and to wait. Within the forseeable future, there will be battery packs that perform much better than the ones available now.

Consistent temp is important and if brands like Lencarta, Elemental etc can achieve that I have no problem with the logo.

I didn't say that all of the cheaper brands achieve consistent colour temperature, I said that you should read independant reviews.

What exactly is stepless power adjustment? Some lights say 5 stop stepless adjustment so assuming a step isn't a stop as it has no steps

A stop is a halving or doubling of power, so 5 stops of adjustment allows adjustment from full power to 1/32nd. Stepless power adjustment is the ability to set the power to anything you want, i.e. it doesn't have to be a measured increment of adjustment

 

[ding76uk]

My advice would be to stick with mains powered lights (if that's what you mostly need them for) and to wait. Within the forseeable future, there will be battery packs that perform much better than the ones available now.

The new Alien Bees battery pack looks like it could be a good one.

 

[JonathanRyan]

You can plug any flash head of any make into one of these battery packs

Is that true? I looked at the Inovatronix for a bit but there is a long list of compatible and incompatible heads and I got confused. The impression I got was that some brands of lights wouldn't work with them for very long. From memory some of the newer Elinchroms were the least compatible.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Is that true? I looked at the Inovatronix for a bit but there is a long list of compatible and incompatible heads and I got confused. The impression I got was that some brands of lights wouldn't work with them for very long. From memory some of the newer Elinchroms were the least compatible.

I think it's largely true. From memory, the ones that are incompatible are the ones that draw too much current from that particular unit. In other words, they would work if the unit had enough power for them.

But I could be wrong about that, it was a while ago that I looked.