Elinchrom D-Lite 4 Kit

Who Should Buy It?

Someone looking for a nice set of strobes (and all the other gear like stands and soft boxes) at a good value.

the Cost

$900 for the kit, $350/head

the Good

Great quality for the value, fits with other Elinchrom accessories

the Bad

Could always use more power (these have 400 w/s per unit). Missing some of the bells and whistles of the higher end units.

Welcome to the third installment in the Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series. Check out the intro here or the Choosing Your Strobes segment here.

My choice of studio strobes that provide a great balance of features and cost are the Elinchrom D-Lite 4’s.

The kit comes with 2 identical, 400 w/s studio strobe heads, with stands, 2 softboxes, cases and cords. The kit includes everything you need to begin your studio lighting setup.

After several months of use, the units work consistently, providing good color and durable use. The units are very easy to set up and use and are one of the best additions to my lighting setup.

The Specs

Each flash head has a power output of 400 w/s, replaceable flash tubes, power variability (ranging 5 stops), modeling light and an optical slave (one can see when the other fires and fires at the same time). They synch at 5V (that is the amount of voltage that runs along the synch cord from your camera to the flash – you can use wireless triggers as well, which is the topic for another installment in this Studio Strobes and Setup for Beginners series), which makes it safe to use with any digital camera.

The soft boxes that come with the kit work best for 1-2 person portraits (they aren’t huge – 1 is 21" and the other is 25.5").

The Good

Good value. You can purchase the entire kit for about the same price as a single professional-quality strobe head. I also really liked the decent range of features and the fact that all the other great Elinchrom accessories worked on the strobe heads. For example, I also purchased the Elinchrom Midi-Octa Bank soft box and it worked perfectly.

The Bad

Not too much to complain about, really. The biggest downside is the power. At 400 w/s, the strobes put out about 1/3 of the power of the high-end versions (400 w/s is still lots of light – the bigger ones will give you about 2 stops of light, though).

The Verdict

Looking for a nice combination of features/power and cost? The versatility, compatibility with other Elinchrom products and the ease of use make these a great studio strobe. You’ll probably also want to purchase some large soft boxes as the two that come in the kit are best for 1-2 person portraits.