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First Look: Elinchrom ELB 1200

Elb 1200

If you’re passionate about location photography and use a lot of flash, then you would have heard back in February that Elinchrom replaced their old Ranger RX system. The new system would be a revolution in portability and the ideal power-tool for the most adventurous of photographers. Say hello to the brand new Elinchrom ELB 1200.

Fast forward a few months to the release date and I’ve actually got a pre-production model of the new Elinchrom ELB 1200 to test out! A massive thank you to The Flash Centre for providing me with this unit to put through its paces.

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The new Elinchrom ELB 1200 has been built from the ground up. Following the success of ELB 400 and ELC design, Elinchrom has now added large OLED control display, bright dimmable daylight LED modelling lamp and only weighing 4.3kg! However, don’t think the light weight means Elinchrom have cut corners on the build quality. They certainly haven’t! This ELB 1200 is built like a tank. Every button press feels firm and precise. Even the way the head cable locks into the pack and how you connect the battery. You can tell this unit it built to last and be a photographer’s go to flash.

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The level of detail Elinchrom had put into this new system was incredible. The LED illuminated on the outlets to show which head is active, now you can turn the head on or off. As well as head recognition, so depending which of the three brand new heads (Pro, Action or HS) you connect to the ELB 1200, it’s able to change settings automatically. Within the new heads you have a 92 CRI dimmable daylight LED which is equivalent to 250w Halogen lamp. Ideal for both still photography and video. On the rear of the heads there is a switch to turn on a silent cooling fan, so no background hmmm when the fan kicks in. To find out more about the ELB 1200’s features, view the list below.

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  • A and B outlets
  • 2:1 (66%:33%) asymmetry
  • 1:1 (50%:50%) option
  • 1.7s recycling time in FAST mode
  • 3.0s recycling time in DEFAULT mode
  • Large OLED control display
  • Head recognition
  • LED illuminated outlets
  • Flash duration display
  • Strobo, delay and sequence features
  • Precise colour consistency
  • Reliable flash duration consistency
  • USB input for firmware updates

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With every battery powered flash unit you need to make sure you’ve got an intelligent battery to power it. Consequently, this is what Elinchrom have done with the ELB 1200 by launching two new batteries, the Battery Air and Battery HD. The Air is a 90 Wh which offers 215 flashes at full power or 80 min of continuous light at full LED power. In addition, the HD which is 144 Wh offers 400 flashes at full power or 120 min of continuous light at full LED power. The Battery Air is included in with ELB 1200 and is allowed as carry-on baggage for travelling. Hence why the name of the battery is Air!

Another feature of these new batteries is the added USB charging port. Perfect for the modern age of mobile devices. Therefore if your iPhone or any other devices is running low on power, connect your USB cable to the ELB battery and away you go. Portable charging on the go and on location.

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Obviously, the main reason why The Flash Centre sent me this Elinchrom ELB 1200 kit was to test it out. So that’s what I planned to do, with a mixture of action sports, fitness and some powerlifting shoots. Furthermore, the kit I was using had both an Action head and Pro. As a result, I could try a mixture of freezing movement with flash sync using the Action head. As well as shooting some hi-sync with the Pro head. To see what I got up to over the weekend using the Elinchrom ELB 1200, watch the video below.

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Here’s a selection of photos from the various shoots over the weekend. Each one was shot using the ELB 1200. For lighting specific information, click on the photo and read the caption below the image. If you require more information about the photos then please get in touch.

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On the tyre shot outside the power of the ELB 1200 was at the max 7.5 – why? So I could really overpower the ambient light. The sun was camera left so acting like a rim light, so all the flashes were facing towards Ryan and the tyre.

I also had the ELB 400 at full power, meaning there must of been almost 2000 watts of flash power on this shoot! Causing the blue in the sky to really pop, as well as the detail within the shot itself. The same processing in Adobe Lightroom has been applied to both photos, therefore the difference is all down to the lighting.

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None of this wouldn’t have been possible without the team at The Flash Centre getting in touch with myself. So a huge thank you to them for making this happen. Phil Gee for finding the time to meet in Bristol for a very last minute skateboarding shoot. Ryan Kibble for lifting some heavy weights over and over again. Plus not forgetting James Churchill who not only let me use The Gym Gloucester for both of the fitness shoots but stepped up to the camera for his brief 2 minutes of camera time.

If you have any questions then please feel free to get in touch of leave a comment below.

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Cirencester’s Annual Scratch N Skate 2015

Scratch N Skate

A year on from the opening jam and the crew at Decimal wanted to make their second year skate comp bigger and better than the last! Which was going to be tough as last years was something special to say the least. Luckily Gaz from Decimal had the helping hand from a lot of big sponsors to make the prize packs rather amazing and worth throwing yourself at every trick to be in a chance of winning. Food, good music and what was perfect weather made the Cirencester’s Annual Scratch N Skate something to remember.

Cirencester park is one of the best within Gloucestershire, which makes the level of skateboarding something else! People from all around turned up for the event, Bristol, Gloucester, Cheltenham to just name a few. For this year there was even a DJ hired out for the day to make sure that the music reflected the hyped up mood of the skateboarding. Like last year the riding was split into 16’s and under, then over 16’s. Even in the space of a year you can see the level of riding has increased massively, with a lot of the younger riders throwing themselves at tricks the older skaters aren’t trying!

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The jams were split into a selection of, best tricks, longest ollie, random skate games and not forgetting the race – Cirencester’s skate jam put on one hell of a show!! For those who didn’t make it here’s a selection of photos from the day and until next year Cirencester! Massive shout out to Gaz and the whole of the Decimal Fam for such an amazing day.

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Skateboard Photography 101 – Quick Guide

Skateboard Photography

Whatever skateboarding magazine you pick up there are always photos that make you stop and go “Wow…wish I could get a shot like that.” (or that just me) That’s what I thought when I first started to get into photography, however seeing as photography is such a big market in terms of different cameras, lenses, flashes extras…..where do you start!? Well hopefully this guide will help out somewhat…..(this is mainly just looking at shooting still photos, rather than video as well, sorry guys!)

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Nowadays the modern camera seems to be able to do everything. Shoot photos, film video, connect to WiFi, apps and more (gone are the days of people picking up some 35mm film DIY everything).

However what should I look for when choosing a camera?

Within skateboarding the key features (yea I know everyone wants a machine gun fast fps camera but you’re not shooting sequences your shooting stills!) to look into is the flash sync speed. The sync is the fastest shutter speed that you can use a flash. 1/250th is about the slowest sync speed that you can get away with shooting in the bright sunlight without having your photos come out blurry.

Therefore the consumer cameras of today are rather limited within the skateboard market. Cameras like the Nikon’s D3100/3200/5100/52000 or Canon’s 1100D/600D/650D (most of these are at the budget end of DSLR cameras), have a sync of 1/200, which may not seem like a massive difference between 1/250 but when you’re trying to freeze fast pace, like skateboarding, the faster the shutter the less blur you’ll be getting, especially when using flash during the day, night time is totally different but daytime you’re competing with the sun remember!

So if you’re starting out and want to get a good camera that’s sort of designed for shooting skate photos it’s sometimes better to look second hand. eBay is your best bet, the cameras to look for are models such as Nikon’s D70(s)/D200/D300 (sorry Canon people even your older SLR’s cameras had a lower flash sync). Plus as these cameras are a couple of years old you can get them rather cheap. Unless you want to drop a couple of £££ on getting the newer cameras like Nikon D7000 and Canon 60D……second hand will do for now, well when you see how much other stuff costs you need to save as much as you can.

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The on camera style flashes (cobra style) seem to be the most common for the working skateboard photographer. They’re a reasonable size, provide a decent amount of juice, and have short enough flash durations (the length of time the flash burst lasts—it’s usually faster than 1/1,200th of second) to freeze the action. When choosing flashes always find out what the flash duration is, the quicker the duration the better it is at freezing action. The likes of Nikon SB-800’s still have a fast duration at ½ power therefore meaning a lot of light is outputted and very quickly!!

Nikon Flashes seem to be the standard. SB-28s, SB-80s or SB-800s—short durations, small, they have built in slaves, and they come with cute little stands. You can also have a look at the older Nikon flashes SB-24,25,26……don’t worry if you’ve got a Canon camera and repping a different brand flash seeing as you’ll be using them off camera.

Other types of flashes are the handle mounted style. These are a little bit bigger than the likes of SB’s and also pack a bit more of a punch. If the size doesn’t put you off then have a look at Metz 45s or 60s.

Another type of flash system that is used are the bigger and bulkier head and power pack units. These flashes output a lot more juice that your normal SB-800 but size and weight wise are soo much bigger and heavier! Again the key brand in this area is the Lumedyne Action Packs. These come in both a 200 (P2XX) w/s and 400 (P4XX) w/s system. The heads are separate units but I’d recommend getting a 2400 watt bulb to handle the high flash power. The reason why people go for these action packs are again the fast flash duration, however these packs are made for action sports so therefore offer a super crazy duration at the highest power output. Only major downfall is that Lumedyne are very hard to get hold of in the UK especially the Actions Packs, therefore you might have to bite the bullet and search the USA and get hit with import tax!!

When placing the flashes off camera the easiest way to position them is to use light stands (similar to what you’d use to the studio) however as you’ll be travelling around they would need to be light weight, height wise you’d only want something that is around 6ft but also collapses to a portable size.

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Now you’ve got your flashes, it’s time to find a way to trigger them remotely. Some of the flashes have a built in optical slave (a sensor that fires a flash when triggered by another flash burst). They work rather well in shaded areas but during bright sunny days it can be a bit hit and miss if they fire or not. Therefore the only real way to make sure your flashes will fire off camera is to buy some wireless radio slaves. Before the one main brand was PocketWizard and that was it. This then meant you had to save a vast amount of money to make sure you had enough to fire all your flashes. With radio slaves you need to make sure you have enough units to match your flashes. So if you own 3 flashes you would need to have 4 radio slave units, (1 on your camera to transmit the signal and then 3 separate units connected to each flash to receive that signal.) However a few more brands make reliable (stay away from eBay slaves, trust me!!) radio slaves now, Elinchrom Skyports, CyberSyncs just to name a few.

Whichever brand of radio slaves you go for just make sure you get the same frequency as with the likes of PocketWizard they do two different frequency types. CE which is UK and Europe and also FCC which is for the USA. As they are totally different frequencies they aren’t compatible so be careful and double check what they are when buying on places like eBay.

Just make sure you’ve got a way of connecting the radio slave to the flash, this is normally via sync port (you get some cables with the radio slave units otherwise you can pick up sync cables very easily)

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Now you’ve got your camera it’s time to think what you’re going to put on the front…….straight away everyone says fisheye!! Yes fisheye is a key lens within skateboard photography but it’s not the be and end of, to be fair you’re better off getting a good couple of prime lenses and learn about composing photos first before stick any fisheye on the front. The good thing about prime lenses is the very fast aperture to create that separation from the background. The main prime lenses I use are a 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4 I use the 85mm more when shooting skating though as the short telephoto view point just gives the right field of view allowing to compress the background and make the subject stand out more.

So the main lenses when starting in order of need to get first would be – 50mm, 85mm then a fisheye (this is just my view but too many people buy a fisheye lens and it just seems to get welded on the camera. Most fisheye shots look the same and can get quite boring unless you know how to use it right! Stick to long lens and learn to look around and find interesting angles)

And if you’ve finally made it down this part….you’ve either read all the info or in fact skipped to the end hoping it improved a little bit! Hopefully this has helped out a few people who are looking to get into skate photography, once you’ve got the gear (which doesn’t happen overnight, trust me – 3 years plus and I’ve finally got my ideal set up) it’s all about practice and more practice. Getting that timing right is all about knowing how your camera works, so just shoot more and you’ll learn more.

Enjoy and happy shooting! If you have any questions then please feel free to get in touch.