I'm curious to hear from anyone using the Elinchrom BXRi 500s, I currently shoot with white lighting x1600s, and while they're fine for most applications, I desperately miss having an audible recycle beep and having digital controls.
I'm thinking of switching over to that setup because cost-wise I could make it a fairly even swap.
Anyone by chance have comparisons between the two?
Haven't used the WL1600 myself. I've got a 500 BXRi though and it is an excellent unit. In addition to the beep it has a lot of other features, such as built in Skyport, which makes it very attractive. In some ways they are similar to the 400BX's (rock solid studio strobes) with a lot more feature set.
I have RX-600's, BX 400's, and D-Lite 2's and once you go with digital controls and more accurate exposure adjustment you'll never go back. And as Carmen says, you'll love the internal Skyport.
I've got a WL 1600 and two WL800s. I don't find that I shoot faster than one frame every two - three seconds, and never have to worry about recycle time. Is hearing the recycle beep that big a deal? I wear hearing aids too so I probably wouldn't hear the beep even if there was one, but that's just me.
The White Lightning units will fire before they are fully recharged, making the lack of audible recycle something of a pain. I like my X3200s, but if I used them on location more I'd probably pop for Elinchroms.
There used to be a third party recycle beeper that you could use with any AC powered strobe. You plug the beeper into the AC outlet and then plug the strobe into it. It beeps when the strobe stops drawing juice.
It was called a Venca Beep. Venca is no longer in business and I don't think anyone else makes something like this.
I don't see why another company couldn't make something similar. (Mr. Buff?)
ericvgill wrote:
The White Lightning units will fire before they are fully recharged, making the lack of audible recycle something of a pain. I like my X3200s, but if I used them on location more I'd probably pop for Elinchroms.
Yep, this has been a concern of mine. I forget to time the recycle sometimes and I'll get an off exposure, and of course that will be one of the killer shots! haha.
They're good lights, but I think I'm ready to try something new.
Well I'm hopefully going to be ordering the BXRi lights in about a month.
The kit comes with two softboxes, and small reflectors, do you guys have any recommendations for other modifiers? I really enjoyed the beauty dish though I probably used soft-boxes the most.
Am I going to be required to use elinchrom modifiers? Will photoflex products work?
AbramG wrote:
Well I wound up ordering the lights a bit sooner than expected. (wanted to take advantage of the price-break from B&H)
I'm gonna get a couple large umbrellas (60") from photoflex, any objections to those?
Unless things have changed recently ...
The umbrella fitting in the center of Elinchrom lights accepts a 7mm umbrella shaft.
Photoflex umbrellas have 8mm shafts. You can use them with Elinchrom lights, but they need to be attached below the light to the swivel fitting, and they are a lot less convenient to use. You might want to stick with Elinchrom umbrellas (or with some other brand that uses 7mm shafts).
Ah! Well that's incredibly useful information thank you! I was not even aware of that.
I will look into elinchroms offerings then.
EDIT: The only problem I can see is that their largest umbrellas is 41", I may look into getting the Photek Softlighter II then since it comes in a 60" and seems to be ideal for my purpose.
The 7mm umbrella fitting is one of the few things about Elinchrom that I don't like. A lot of us found out the hard way that the more common 8mm shafts don't fit, and I'm happy to have saved you a bit of aggravation.
Well I received the kit today, and was a little bummed out to find out they do not come with reflectors, my own fault, I should have read the listing better.
What I was bothered even more about was the fact I did not receive power cables in the box either. Somehow from B&H I got the one box that was missing power cables.
What a massive let-down! I've been waiting all week to try the lights out, got them today and I still can't use them lol.
I hope B&H makes this right without me having to ship everything back.
I agree with you, but the manual explicitly says in bold letters not to use any cable but the supplied one, I guess it has some kind of special fuse in there so you don't blow the thing up on accident.
