Elinchrom Lights BX-Series- Any Good

Peter_Hartland

Peter_Hartland

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Peter Hartland
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I have never been happy with studio lighting as my results have always been iffy to say the least. I finally decided to bite the bullet & attend a Chris Burfoot course. Finally the mysteries of light set up & control of exposure became clear.

Obvisouly Chris was using Elinchrom equipment, but I did find the built in radio control on the new BX series and the fact you can accurately control the power seemed good & found I could sort out all my problems.

Does anyone use these & is the quality as good as it appears. I'm looking to order a set of 250's with soft boxes & a spare whit brolly this week. Is it a good choice?
 
The quality of the light is excellent, you will have seen the build quality for yourself, but it's better IMO than the D-Lite's and will be OK with careful handling.

The main problem is the cost of accessories, and that's where the real cost of studio lighting occurs - a bit like buying a Bentley because it's a nice car and then finding out that it only does 10 to the gallon:)

You might find Bowens or Lencarta ElitePro a better choice, no problems with build quality and the cost of the modifiers is much lower simply because you have choices of supplier. Please see this comparison chart
 
I owned the dlites and now own the rx units. so I can comment on the build quality of bx series. but the rx are great especially with the skyports.

You can buy lots of 3rd party modifiers for Elinchrom lights, they used to be hard to get but not anymore, depends whether you want genuine modifiers. Ive got a very good quick setup 90cm octa thats really nice and didnt cost that much at all.

the one thing I dont understand is brollys, this is just my opionion a lot of good people use them well. Softbox's have much better light control, even a softbox without a grid allows too much light to go where you dont want it and especially so as most people who buy the more budget kits will be shooting at home where the spilled light will get bounced all over the place.
 
I use several Elinchrom lights, and all are excellent.

The ability to remotely control the lights from an Eli Skyport is extremely important to me, esp for lights up high and after a long day when I'm shattered and don't have to walk up to a light to adjust it. Sessions are much more fluid, and reduce the need for assistants.

Eli Accesssories are the best you can buy, but cost. Compatible 3rd party accessories are widely available and as cheap as anything else you can buy for other systems.

The weird 7mm brolly hole is a pain however, but many are now coming with 7mm shafts.

The quality is as good as it appears.

Pasted from my other thread post ....


"They are Swiss made (all of them, not China or India as mentioned above (their Prolinca range were made in India, but are long gone)), they are probably the most widely used professional system (certainly internationally), they have several very neat tricks up their sleeves (like the very portable Quadra or very powerful Ranger), remote power control via Skyports, internal octaboxes, extremely well made (I've been hammering mine for more years than I care to mention and the above commments on the loose mounts is not my experience at all), have an excellent budget range (D-Lite) to get you addicted early, plenty of third party accessories now available, excellent second hand retention values (check out Ebay), the equal power level indicator across the whole range, a system you can never outgrow and you will never look back and regret the purchase, or wish for another system (well, maybe a Profoto at a push).

Oh, and I forgot and probably most importantly for me, they are completely and utterly consistent from shot to shot to shot, both in colour and intensity. Something that cannot be said about all brands. "
 
Softbox's have much better light control, even a softbox without a grid allows too much light to go where you dont want it and especially so as most people who buy the more budget kits will be shooting at home where the spilled light will get bounced all over the place.
Click to expand...
This is true, spilled light can be a major problem in small spaces, especially when people have white walls and ceilings.

But part of the problem is due to poor softbox design and poor quality diffusers, and this can make a huge difference - so although I fully accept that there are now more 'Elinchrom compatible' light modifiers available, it doesn't necessarily follow that they are worth buying.
 
Thanks guys, understanding the accessories may be a little more expensive, I've just ordered all the kit. Its a bit like using an un-calibrated monitor hit or miss which is what I suffered on the Proliner units I had & the accessories like having non besoke printer profiles again hit or miss. I am a sort of techno-geek & get frustrated when the equipment doesn't good produce consistency. I now will know I cant blame the kit just me. Really has been useful again thanks
 
yeah all softbox's arent created equally, but that is one of the reasons you pay more for elinchrom ones to start with :)

there are some good ones out there.

As Ive said before I think there are pros and cons to every make, but like most things in photography you get stuck in a system because thats what youve bought. If it didnt cost so much to change I would certainly look at other makes.
 
I bought a set of BXRi lights. Love them. The ability to remotely control the power from the Skyport on the hot shoe is brilliant. I've yet to do a long photoshoot where the requirements change meaning changing flash power, but can imagine how tiring and tedious it is to go up and adjust power at the flash.

My only issue has been the DOA. So far, I'm zero out of two. Both of my Elinchrom orders have been screwed up. Broken parts, parts missing, shattered bulbs, pre-opened boxes, etc. So pretty off-putting when you need them urgently. If you have the option of buying in person (WHE or TFC), then go for it. The quality of light is awesome. The cheap softboxes the kits come with are a bit of a pain to assemble and produce reasonable results. But I picked up a 1m octabox at Focus, and the difference is just amazing. The quality is lovely, but you pay for it (£200 for a 1m softbox!)
 
If you think the light is nice from a rear mounted octa, try ...

Reverse mounted internal 2m octas for only...

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-elinchrom-octa/p1004575

This is why you need the remote power control of the Elinchroms, that I think not even the Bowens have (please correct me if I am wrong, it wont be the first time).

Edit - think I am wrong, the RC3 remote...
 
The other thing that's nice about the remote power control is you can have up to four groups of lighting and control the power independently for each group (or have it set to "all" and raise / lower the power on all lighting no matter which group it's in).
 
even more fun with the RX lights and the usb dongle, I can control everything from the computer and save setups including what modifiers etc were used and position of lights.
you get a nice little interface that the same as the back of each head on the screen and you click away to change all the setting, very nice :)
 
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