Some Elinchrom gear talk for some of the lighting folk that visit my blog.

Elinchrom CEO Malcom Whittle Talking about upcoming products. from Boston Wedding Photographers on Vimeo.

It’s reminiscent of the old ‘Combat Zone’ here in Boston. Sure you knew there was an area that wasn’t pleasant, or just wasn’t for you and you simply avoided it. It’s not like all of Boston is crappy because the Combat Zone existed in one small section.

Amsterdam is much like that. And the Netherlands as a whole is quite nice. Very creative people with beautiful buildings, colorful art, and my favorite part – They bicycle everywhere! It’s totally a bicycle city and i love it for that. Want to go to a nice restaurant? Get on your bike and head over to some canal-side place and put on your heels and you are ready to go. I rode my bike everywhere, including the Van Gogh Museum, which to my dismay, didn’t have ‘Starry Night’ available.

As for Emmeloord, well it’s a slightly industrial area. Frank and his wife Annawieck live there and have a wonder son, Brian. Dutch people are very hospitable and we were introduced to Stroopwafels. Pretty much the best treat you can get yourself in The Netherlands. Thanks again Frank! They also specialize in cheese. If you even remotely like cheese, do yourself a favor and buy yourself a block of Frico Old Dutch Master. I love me some cheese, but boy, this is the best I’ve ever had. Yes, it’s that good. I got some as Kaasland, one of the best cheese places in all of The Netherlands.

The workshop

Well where does on start? Frank sells out workshops all across Europe. Is featured in many European magazines and books and has quite the studio there in Emmeloord. Frank and I went over all sorts of lighting techniques, I only wish I wasn’t suffering from severe jet lag, otherwise we would have been able to absorb even more.

Frank’s ability to teach in a clear and concise manor cannot be questioned. He’s really got it down to a science. Frank and us use similar gear so it was quite easy to follow along. He also has his very nice assistant Wendy and model Jennifer (Who spoke fantastic English!) on site to help things go smoothly.

Well enough talk, here are some photos!

Slightly different processing:

Kaasland, our favorite cheese store.

Look at all the bikes!

So you bought the Elinchrom Octabank as one of your largest light sources. It’s a fantastic unit for sure. And at $1000USD it should be. This is a highly coveted unit and is used by Annie Leibovitz and other very well known photographers including Scott Kelby and Frank Doorhof and the like.

There are plenty reviews on the net, so i’m not going to get too deep into that. Instead i’m going to list some Elinchrom Octabank modifications out there on the net, what i’ve used with success and also some operational photos.

Photos on operation:

See the spread of light here:


Mounts for modifiers.


Keep the cable close to the unit, as opposed to sloppy. Dont want to see it in a catchlight!

First off. The included tilt-head with the unit is fine for some uses but really leaves something to be desired at times. If you’ve ever mounted the Elinchrom octa Bank on a boom, the stock Head grip wouldn’t suffice as it would lose its grip quite easily.

Solution: Avenger D200 Grip Head. This process while not entirely reversible, is at least reversible to be used with the stock grip head again.

Parts needed to perform modification:

• Drill
• 3/8ths Bit
• Avenger D200 Grip Head

Steps:

• 1. Unscrew the stock grip head from the elinchrom octabank mount until it removes itself from the unit.
• 2. Reinforce the attached mount and prepare your 3/8ths drill bit and drill a perfect hole within the existing hole.
• 3. Unscrew the D200 grip head and start removing all the pieces. Don’t worry they are listed in order below.

Completed Unit:

• 4. Place the elinchrom mount on the avenger bolt, in the order located in the photo above.
• 5. Reuse the elinchrom black friction rubber plate for the other side of the cork piece provided by avenger.
• 6. Tighten and enjoy true strength in mounting in any position.
• 7. TIP: Store the outer diffusion fabric around the mount when storing in its case, so the metal mount inside the reflective fabric doesn’t start to rip into the reflective fabric!

Elinchrom’s official guide on using the Octabank

The Purpose

To shoot tethered and have images that were shot immediately appear on your computer screen for review

What’s Needed…

1. Camera , 2. EOS Utility, 3. Canon Camera Cable, 4. Lightroom

Steps

1. Locate the cable that came with your cameara.
Seen Here. Standard USB large to small connector.

2. Install EOS Utility Software from Canon.
This may differ based on what camera you have, i’m using it on a 5D. I’m pretty sure it’s generic across most of the recent bodies such as the 1D, 5D 20D, 40D etc… Select EOS System, Your model camera and once displayed click on the ‘Drivers and Support’ tab select software ‘EOS Utility 2.4′ here.

3. Ensure camera is set to Communication = “PC Connection”.
This is a very important step. Without this being set, your camera won’t be able to communicate to your computer. Go to your camera’s menu system and look for the menu item called ‘Communication’. See;

4. Plug in your USB cable into the camera and laptop.
The smaller USB side fits into your camera and the larger side fits into any standard USB computer port. Turn your camera on.

5. Create a folder for ‘watching’
Simply create a folder. Put it someplace easy to access or someplace with plenty of disk space available. Mine like others that have done this use the desktop.

6. Open Canon EOS Utility

Click Camera Settings…

You’ll now see this screen;

If you still don’t see this screen popup, hit the shutter button on the camera, it may have gone asleep since you started this tutorial! lol…

Ok from here, in the EOS Utility, click on File-> Preferences. Tab to the ‘Destination’ tab, and let’s set that to your ‘Watched’ folder, wherever you created it. Seen here;

Uncheck any of the checkboxes…

Then, we’ll tab to the ‘Linked Software’ tab, set this to ‘None’.

7. Lightroom Settings
Now on to Lightroom. Go to File-> Auto Import, select “Enable Auto Import” choose choose Auto Import Settings.

When the dialog appears (shown above), at the top where it says “Watched Folder” click on the Choose button and find your watched folder and select it. Any images that are placed in here are now auto imported into Lightroom.

And that’s all folks… start shooting away! Enjoy!

And let’s not forget our new line of albums – we use a variety of different manafacturers and we send out at the beginning of each year to update production and portfolios. These are the first to come back for January 2009.