Elinchrom D Lite 2 Kit

Mondo74

Mondo74

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I'm looking at setting up a small home studio and hope to be able to take a basic portrait kit out on the road and have the chance of a used Elinchrom D Lite 2 kit for £179. It has 2 200ws heads, 2 stands and 2 soft boxes. There is one power lead missing which will only cost about a tenner and there's no sky port transmitter which would cost about £50 so the complete kit would cost £240.

My thoughts are that I would probably end up wanting a more powerful main light and probably some other light modifiers. Is it the case that Elinchrom use a proprietary fitting which effectively bumps up the price of available modifiers? Are there other heads that could be triggered by the skyport Eco transmitter if I decide to get a more powerful main light or am I limiting myself to Elinchrom? And finally, is there anything else that would give me a comparable starter set for comparable money?

Any advise would be welcome.
 
Elinchrom made modifiers are expensive, but they are high quality and in my opinion worth the money. However there are cheaper ebay softboxes that come with Elinchrom mount. So you have options.

As for trigger, no it can only trigger Skyport system triggers. But as upgrade for something more powerful down the road you can look at Elinchrom 500BXRi
 
That seems to me to be good value for money, if it really is as stated, and isn't the old model without fan cooling - they overheated.

As I keep saying, 200Ws is enough, if you have a modern digicam that produces acceptable results at 200 or 400 ISO - everytime you double the ISO setting you double the effective power of the flash.

You only need to fire one flash head using a radio trigger, any other flash heads will act as slaves (unless you're sharing space with other photographers whose flashes are setting off your flashes) so you can add other lights/makes later without problem.

Yes, Elinchrom accessories are expensive and although there are some cheap 3rd party ones available, most of them are cheap rather than good value for money.

If it was sold as a kit the softboxes may not be very good.

A comparable kit from Lencarta would cost you £320, so although future accessories will be better value for money and the softbox and the stands may be better quality, your purchase seems to make sense because of the price.
 
Buy it.

If you hate it then sell it. Probably for more.
 
I've been using a D-Lite 2 kit for years very happily. You won't need more power for regular portraiture, but if they're the early non-fan cooled ones they can overheat if they're enclosed in a softbox with the modelling light on. Does no harm, they just switch off for ten minutes, but if you turn the modelling light off or down to minimum you'll probably be fine.

Your Amazon link is to a new D-Lite 4 kit - if that's actually what you've been offered, bite his hand off.

You don't need a Skyport trigger - just get any old cheap radio trigger. Lencarta do one for £40, or get a Yongnuo RF-602 set from Amazon and you can also use it to trigger hot-shoe guns or a camera (check that you get the right leads when you buy). Cheap, versatile :thumbs:

Elinchrom's Rotalux softboxes are superb, but I've just bought a couple of Lencarta's excellent Profold softboxes which can be ordered with an Elinchrom mount. There's nothing to touch them for the money.
 
Thanks for all the comments guys - I'll give the seller a shout in the morning and confirm whether or not it's the fan cooled heads and probably snap them up.
 
HoppyUK said:
Your Amazon link is to a new D-Lite 4 kit - if that's actually what you've been offered, bite his hand off.
Click to expand...

??? What link?? :-)
 
:-( I want to know who did an Internet search and found this kit at MPBPhotographic and bought it !!! :-(

My own fault for hesitating (and being at work didn't help) :-(
 
Oh no! Feel for you there fella, but you know for next time. On a positive, there had to be a reason why MPB were selling it so cheap...
 
DEANSUPREME said:
The saying "You snooze you loose" comes to mind here.
Click to expand...

Yup - clearly wasn't meant to be. I know deep down I'd have wanted something a bit bigger anyway but they probably have done for side lighting.
 
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