Rambling Introduction

Okay – lets be honest – the whole review is excessively verbose.  So here we go!

Most photographers go through a fairly standard progression when learning. It usually goes something like this: point & shoot / camera phone > SLR/dSLR > first flash > new lenses > lighting gear > general gear obsession. The order of the stages vary from person to person, and often times the “first flash” and “lighting gear” stages are skipped altogether.

In my case, the “first flash”, “new lenses” and “lighting gear” stages basically happened all at once. While it’s calmed down for me in the past few years, the truth is that I am 100% geek to the core. I love gadgets, and electronics and toys in general. Which makes photography a particularly dangerous endeavor for me because, like most gadget geeks, once I’ve identified the next new amazing toy it quickly becomes obsession. It’s not a question of if I must own it so much as when.

Fast forward from “point & shoot camera” to “gear obsession”. For the past two years I’ve been slowly building a collection of Strobist gear in order to develop my off camera lighting skills. As a result I’ve learned a great deal about controlling light. More specifically I have become a more versatile photographer because I don’t need to be at the mercy of the sun.

So… although I love my little hot-shoe flashes, they aren’t perfect for every situation and I finally broke down & went shopping for real strobe lights.  Not having a dedicated studio space meant that I had a few things in mind.  Primarily, cost effectiveness and portability.

I had spent a lot of time flipping back and forth between the AlienBees B800 units, and the Elinchrom D-Lite4 kits.  I had been holding out for the AlienBees PLM and Vagabond II battery packs to come off of back-order, and decided to continue weighing my options.  Let me tell you, I’m glad I did.

What finally tipped it for me was some browsing on B&H.  I noticed that the D-Lite4 kits were actually marked as discontinued, but the D-Lite IT kits had just been released (as of this post, the D-Lite IT kit is still marked as unreleased on amazon.com).  Further investigation revealed that D-Lite IT kits had gotten some pretty nice upgrades from the D-Lite4s.

What’s in the box?

The kit actually came to me in 3 boxes.  One containing the lights, cases, softboxes, cables and radio gear.  Two smaller boxes containing the Manfrotto lightstands.

• 2x – Elinchrom D-Lite IT monoheads
• 1x  -Tube bag (for the heads)
• 1x – Soft case (for light stands & softboxes)
• 2x – Manfrotto 367B 9′ light stands
• 1x -16′ PC Sync Cable
• 1x – Wide angle umbrella reflector
• 2x – 25 x 25″ Portalite Softbox
• 1x – Skyport ECO Transmitter
• 1x – Plastic protective cover
• 1x – User manual
• 1x – DVD-Guide

New Stuff

While I don’t have the original D-Lite4 units available, I did spend quite a bit of time reading about their issues (which had originally swayed me toward the AlienBees in the first place) and I was pretty excited to see that the Elinchrom had clearly been listening to their customer base because this list of upgrades addresses most of the issues I had heard of.  The short list of upgrades is as follows:

• Built in automatic cooling fan
• Proportional modeling light capability
• Support for standard 8mm and 9mm umbrella shaft sized (D-Lite2/4 only took 7mm)
• Built in SkyPort Triggers (!!!)
• Ships with an EL-Skyport Transmitter ECO (!!!)
• Optical Trigger (not new) with pre-flash intelligence (new!)

Changes (from the previous D-Lite To Go Kit)

In addition to the upgrades (which I’ll talk more about in a moment) the kit underwent a couple of small changes.

First of all, while there are still two softboxes included with the kit, they are now both 25 x 25″ (63.5 x 63.5 cm) instead of one  21 x 21″ and one 25 x 25″.  For my purposes, the 25″ softbox is almost too small, so I’m glad that I didn’t end up with one of the 21″ units because it would only have gotten use until I could afford to purchase a larger one (which I likely will anyway).

Next, the new kit includes a 16cm Umbrella Wide Reflector 90°, and one plastic protective hood (instead of just two protective hoods).  I was a bit concerned about this at first because I really don’t want to hassle with removing the modeling lamp from one of the heads each time I have to re-pack the gear in to the (rather nice) case – but fortunately with the plastic protective hood mounted on one head, and the reflector mounted on the other, both heads fit comfortable in to the gear case.  If I were to accidentally drop the case on it’s end, there is still a possibility that the head without a protective hood could be slammed a bit too tightly against the other head resulting in a broken modeling light (or flash bulb for that matter) so I’d consider purchasing another protective cover as soon as is practical (even though it’s a pretty expensive piece of plastic).

Triggering

First lets talk about the radio triggers.  While PocketWizard is definitely the “industry standard” in this arena, I’ve been using the (much more cost effective) Skyport Universal units to trigger my small flashes for quite some time.  This was really what pushed me over the edge.  The built-in receivers mean that none of my small flashes have to sit out the game because I don’t need to use one of my universal receivers to control the monoheads.  Not to mention that I now have a spare transmitter.

The built-in receivers, and included Skyport trigger work quite well, and it only took me a few minutes to get the frequencies synchronized amongst all of my triggers & receivers.  I was somewhat worried that I would be unable to use my current Skyport transmitter to trigger the built-in receivers because the built-in receiver units are not able to support as many different frequencies as the Skyport Universal triggers can.  After a little bit of experimentation I discovered I had nothing to worry about as long as I stuck to the first four channels of the Universal units.  Everyone is playing together quite nicely now.

Before moving on I should mention that the monoheads can also be triggered using a radio trigger of your choice with the standard 3.5mm sync cable (PocketWizard, CyberSync & eBay triggers with the appropriate adaptor cable).  The kit includes a fairly long PC sync cable as well if you don’t currently own any radio triggers.  Not to mention the built-in optical trigger that can now be programmed to detect on-camera pre-flash sequences.  I haven’t tested this simply because I rarely if ever use on-camera flash – and definitely never with fancy new studio strobes at my disposal.

Build Quality

I readily admit to having limited experience working with monolights.  Most of it is based in time spent with borrowed AlienBees – so that is all I really have to use as a measuring stick here.  That said, I am overall very happy with the feel of the D-Lite IT heads.  They are noticeably lighter than the B800, and don’t feel quite so sturdy.  That said, they absolutely don’t feel too plastic y or cheap in my opinion.  Personally I approve of the heft.  Being the gadget head that I am, I already have enough gear to lug around so shaving a few pounds here and there is always a benefit.

While I haven’t had the opportunity to “test” this yet, I appreciate that the handle on the back-side of the head includes conveniently placed fuse holder.  Its definitely possible that the exact placement might lead to damaging the spare fuse if one were hoisting the head a bit too vigorously (tightly) but considering again how light the head is, I don’t foresee this being an issue for me.

Usability

If you’ve never used monolights before (and chances are that is the case if you’re reading this review on my website) then never fear.  There’s nothing truly complicated about this equipment whatsoever.  The power settings are controlled using simple up & down arrows, with an LCD output display.  The power settings have a 5 stop range (adjustable in 1/10th of a stop).  So truly, flip the big red power switch, bump the power up or down to your liking, and off you go.

There are also clearly labeled buttons for turning on/off the modeling lamp, audible “ready” indicator, and the optical trigger.  The modeling lamp and optical trigger have a couple of modes (check the manual) that you just cycle through by pressing the respective button one, two or three times.  Super simple.

There is a not-so-obvious but not-really-hidden menu system used to access & modify the custom functions.  The functions are:

• EL-Skyport On & Off
• Radio Group (1 through 4)
• Frequency Channel Settings (also 1 through 4)

Cycling through these settings is a snap.  Spend 5 minutes reading the manual and you’ll be all set here.

While these don’t effect the functionality of the actual lights themselves in terms of configuration or triggering, I have to make special mention of the included soft boxes.  Specifically, they drive me a little crazy to assemble at first.  Primarily because these are the first softboxes that I actually own and knowing how expensive they are to replace I was a little neurotic when trying to insert rod A in to tab B.

After having assembled and disassembled them ten or fifteen times I’m finally starting to it done in a reasonable amount of time.  The trick is simply to remember it’s okay to apply a bit of force when stretching the outer casing of the softbox away from the metal mounting ring when inserting the support rods.  I was far to hesitant with this at first because I have a habit of breaking my nice things shortly after acquiring them.  It turns out that they are quite sturdy, and given how small they actually collapse when disassembled I feel that the little bit of frustration is worth it.  Of course, make sure to practice this about a thousand times before pulling them out in front of potential clients so you don’t end up looking foolish while fussing with them.

Executive Summary

If you’re in the market for your first monolights, then I can comfortably recommend the Elinchrom D-Lite IT To-Go kit.  Although I can make a (very) short list of complaints, at the end of the day the build quality and feature set are absolutely on par with the price range.  Especially when we consider the built in radio triggers, which to the best of my knowledge, are not available options for any other lighting kits for under $1,000 (USD).

If this isn’t your first experience with off camera lighting, and you’re just looking to supplement your current arsenal, then this kit is still a good bet provided that 400WS is enough juice for your purposes.

If you were brave enough to read this entire review, then thank you so much for your time.  Absolutely feel free to post comments (especially corrections if you have any).  I’d love to hear your feedback or questions.

-Brian