Happy 4th of July all! (For those outside the U.S. reading this, July 4th is the day we celebrate our independence from British rule).

I’m particularly grateful for the blessings I’ve received as part of living in this country - have a safe and fun weekend!

If you plan on going to see some fireworks, why not also take some pictures? If you’ve never taken any before, check out Scott Kelby’s brief how-to here. The one thing he didn’t mention that I found useful was to set my lens to Manual focus instead of automatic. If you open your shutter before the firework actually explodes, it won’t have anything to focus on. If you switch to manual focus and focus out to infinity, though, you should be good to go.

Click the image below for a gallery of my shots from a fireworks show I went to last night.

All shots are directly from the camera - I didn’t have the time to combine multiple fireworks into one collaged shot. I’ll try and do that in the near future and post it.

This week’s photo is courtesy of my Elinchrom D-Lite strobe set. If you’re interested in learning more about those or studio lighting, check out the studio strobes for beginner series here, here or here.

Click on the image for a larger view. Its specs are: Canon 40D, 24-70 2.8L lens at 70mm, 100 ISO, f14, 1/200 sec.

I’ll be posting more specifics on the photo (diagram, setup shot, etc.) in a series installment.

A few weeks ago I posted on The Fear. Not sure what The Fear is? Check it out here.

Well, last night The Fear struck! My computer stopped working (throwing crazy erros - I’m a PC users). I actually ended up trying to swap in a new hard drive to fix the problem. When that didn’t do the trick, I turned to the web and did some troubleshooting. I eventually found out that it was due to corrupted memory. After pulling one of my memory sticks, I was back up and running.

The downside (and why I can hate my computer sometimes)? Hours of wasted time - as a result, I won’t be posting anything major today.

Just a reminder, though! Always make sure you are backing up your data - don’t let The Fear become a reality.

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.

Hi all. See below for some Friday news. Have a great weekend!

• Looking for another way to display your Flickr photos? I gave this link a few weeks ago. Here is another great option, DestroyFlickr.
• Looking for a summer photo contest? Canon has one going for national parks. The prizes include a trip and a Canon 5D (one sweet camera)! You can check out the details here.
• Looking for a way to make your lighting more interesting? Check out this post from the folks over at FlashFlavor.
  

Late last week I posted that I was finishing up an exciting project. Well, I worked hard over the weekend and am able to launch it today! I just posted a permanent page about Photo Diagrams, a tool that allows you to easily and quickly crete professional photo and lighting diagrams. You can then print/export those diagrams for use on web sites, blogs, reminders for how you set things up, etc.

Check out Photo Diagrams here for more. You can click and open the online version, or download and install it as a desktop application.