as you know, both myself and a friend use them, my friend has had his for about 3 years now and both they, the mods and accessories all still working and in good condition.
The air cushioned stands that come with the heads are very very substantial even to slight overkill imo. The boom arm is great and works brilliantly on the stands, it feels trustworthy.
The lencarta octobox looks *slightly* better than the elemental one, but any octobox that isn't one of the swish folding up ones (£50+ more) will always be a bit of a pain in the rear to put up or down. I'm liking the look of
this for event work. The snoot, 5 in 1 reflector and the barn doors are visibly the same ones as on ebay from chinese sellers, but perfectly good, and the same price or cheaper. My beauty dish hasn't come through yet, and elemental had the cheapest deal I could find for beauty dish + honeycomb + diffuser anywhere.
The umbrellas are good, sturdy construction, waay on a par with my calumet brand 1.5m diameter one.
All the heads come with a brolly reflector, and these are very well built.
The stand bags that they come with are excellent, I've ordered 2 more.
I'm not a huge fan of the 'armoured' studio box that the lights come in, for a studio use or occasional taking from the car to a venue, it'd be fine, but it's basically some large sheets of foam put together to make a case, with dividers inside. They used to do an awesome 3 head roller case that they don't any more
So mine will be going in a rolley peli.
I made the decision to go elemental rather than a bowens system that would last me forever because it meant I could get 4 heads and a load of mods, rather than 2 or 3 lower power heads with slower duration, I'll have access to more branded kit through uni from september, I wasn't missing out on location power because I'm going to get a tronix explorer mains battery pack (which is half the price and has more juice than the bowens travelpak). The strobist
article on alienbees sums up a lot of my reasoning, just replace bees with elemental.
