Finally - A Battery To Get Charged Up About

Pardon the corny heading. Battery and charging and all that - it is he legacy of hack writing for newspapers and small publications. At least I didn't use the WAR! typeface or Gotcha!

The product that got me going is an answer to the enquiries we get regarding portable studios. Lots of people have studio mono-block kits made by Elinchrom and Bowens - as well as other manufacturers - and want to take the lights out into the open where they cannot access AC mains.

Some firms make battery sets that can power these mono-blocks.  I remember that they were lead-acid types that weighed a fair bit  and were bulky. Some units, like the inexpensive D-lite sets from Elinchrom, did not have a connection point for an DC battery. Users were forced to go over to the speed-light system and work with little AA cells.

Now they can have the battery pack option out in the field. Jin-bei is a Chinese manufacturer who has made a number of flash units, soft boxes , and light stands. They have brought out the EN-350 inverter set. Please see the images and note that they device converts the DC from the Li-ion battery to AC and allows two conventional Australian cords to plug in. Your D-lite will chug away quite happily just as usual for a hundred shots or so.

It is light enough to be packed easily over one shoulder and comes with a padded bag and a dedicated clamp that allows you to attach it to the side of a standard light stand. The whole lot in one small footprint. I should thoroughly recommend a D-lite 4 head, a 44cm Minisoft beauty dish , and this inverter for a one-light field portrait setup. I have tried it on me and it makes ME look beautiful...

Seriously useful for a small price - $ 399.

Standard Of the Industry...Again

They are getting clever there at Pocket Wizard. They have long BEEN clever, and exercised it to the max with their Mini TT and Flex TT, but now they have improved their basic transmitter and receiver unit - by simplifying it.

It is a dumb transmitter - ie. it does not do a TTL signal - but it does fire in any direction so you can feed out to a flash or back to the camera as a camera trigger with equal ease. They have catered to photographers in a multiple-worker situation by putting a 10-position switch on the side above the firing button. No need to go into the guts of it to fiddle tiny switches into harmony - just turn the side control on transmitter and receiver and away you go.

Turn it over - the battery compartment has been made as a hinged unit - no more losing it in the heat of the moment. And it works on two plain old cooking-variety AA cells. Get them anywhere.

We have a box full of output leads so you can connect it to almost any flash and you can get dedicated cables for the camera end too.

Throw away your old Radio Slave and go with this new unit.

Big Soft Sale For Big Hard Photographers

Go on. Harden up. Time to soften your photos.

We've just put out a sales stack of CL-brand soft boxes and suitable speed rings on our bargain floor near the front of the store.

The CL boxes come in all sorts of sizes - from little 40 x 40 squares up to massive strip and bed boxes. There are octas as well. Also deep and shallow types and some with recessed fronts so that you can fit egg crate grilles.

The speed rings are available for Elinchrom, Profoto, and Bowens - though there are a limited number of Bowens ones. As you'll see from the illustration, the rings are multiple-use types - they are colour-coded for where the rods are to be inserted.

These are well-built items and would serve a good long time in professional use.

The sale prices are 30% off marked retail for individual items - and if you buy the softboxes with a lighting kit we'll go to 40% off the softbox prices. It is a good opportunity to expand the light-shaping capabilities of your studio.