K i t Z o n e
or a home studio setup,
or if you’re shooting
indoors on location,
there’s no beating the
power and versatility
of a conventional
mains-powered flash
kit. Prime options include the likes
of the Elinchrom D-Lite and Interfit
Honey Badger twin-head kits, which
are easy to carry around, yet quick
to set up and simple to use.
The only real problem is if you
want the versatility of being able to
shoot outdoors using a flash head to
supplement natural daylight. Mains-
powered kits won’t be much use if
there’s nowhere to plug them in, but
there’s a growing range of battery-
powered flash heads that are as
powerful as most studio heads,
and vastly more so than flashguns.When you’re supplementing the sun
or even overpowering it to turn day
into night, you’re only likely to need
a single flash head, but twin-head
kits are also widely available.
The increasingly common third
option is to go for a constant light.
Traditionally, lamps often used
halogen bulbs and ran horrendously
hot, but there’s been something of
an LED revolution in recent times.
Ultra-bright LEDs laid out in a
matrix across a rectangular or circular
panel can be an alternative to a flash
head, although the maximum light
output will be much lower. Plus points
include a ‘what you see is what you
get’ approach to lighting a subject.
And when you’re shooting video,
constant LED lighting is perfectly
viable, whereas a flash head will be
entirely useless. Matthew RichardsF
The contenders
STUDIO FLASH
1 Elinchrom D-Lite RX 4/4 To Go £653/$750
2 Interfit Honey Badger 320Ws 2-Light Kit £500/$470LOCATION FLASH
3 Elinchrom ELB 500 TTL To Go Set £1,349/$1,900
4 Interfit Honey Badger Unleashed £699/$749
5 Phottix Indra500 TTL £899/$1,000
6 Profoto B10 Plus £1,795/$2,095LED PANELS
7 Manfrotto Lykos Bi-Color £330/$320
8 Rotolight AEOS £899/$995118 DIGITAL CAMERA^ OCTOBER 2019Photographic lighting comes in all shapes
and sizes these days. Discover the best fit
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Lighting kits