Camera mounted on tripod and set slightly higher than model’s eye-level to show a bit more of the ravine behind the model. Model was sitting on a rock outcropping that is slightly higher than the surrounding rocks and ground. Accent lights added to add interest and depth to photo with color gels.

Equipment used : Canon EOS 5DSR + Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art (loaned from a friend) with tripod+ballhead+cable release, Elinchrom ELB500 TTL with standard reflector + grid + color gel on lightstand, Elinchrom ELB400 with standard reflector + grid + color gel on lightstand, Canon 600EX-RT triggered with Elinchrom trigger + color gel on Manfrotto mini-tripod, Elinchrom Skyport Transmitter Pro – Canon

Note : Review / test unit for the Elinchrom ELB500 To Go Set was provided free-of-charge by Elinchrom MY / Shriro (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd ; unit has since been returned to provider.  Special thanks goes to That Special Occasion for sponsoring the wedding gown and DM Make-up & Beauty for the make-up & styling.

This post is based on the ELB500 TTL Dual To Go set (N° 10310.1). Product testing was done during the Malaysian product lunch and 2 days of shooting.

First of all, I am likely biased because I have been an avid Elinchrom user since 2016 but that being said,  I try to present only the facts and did not sugar-coat anything.

And now, let me start by telling you what is good about the ELB500 TTL :

Construction & Build
Basically built like a tank for both the battery and power pack; greatly improved locking mechanism between power pack pack and battery; rubberized base / feet on battery pack prevents slipping; very robust protective caps on strobe cable connector.

It also continues on the tradition from the Quadra packs that Elinchrom designed weather-seals onto the pack. There is a rubber gasket between the battery & power pack, caps on the head cable connectors and what looks like a completely sealed top panel / OLED panel.

No, it is not recommended that you use the lights in a thunderstorm or snowstorm but the pack is more likely to survive such abuses better than most other battery packs.

The ELB500 snappy that came with the To Go Set is very well-made; it protects the pack as well as makes it easy to carry around or to hang around lightstands as counterweight though the snappy is rather bulky and does make the ELB500 slight less portable. The older ELB400 had small plastic mount points that allows you to add a simple carrying strap making it significantly more portable though I have always feared that one day the plastic mounts though tough will break through abuse.

Ease of Use
The ELB500 TTL has a different menu system and interface compared to the ELB400 that took quite a lot of getting used to. Although once I gotten used to it and after watching Elinchrom’s own video on Youtube, it wasn’t complicated to use. The only thing that kinda got to me was the way the modelling light controls was buried under a long-press; long-presses are normally not associated to professional camera equipment.

Usability compared to any manual studio strobe (like the ELB400 or any other non-TTL flash/strobe) is great as the TTL is really very accurate when paired with the Elinchrom Transmitter PRO, radio range was definitely good (max range tested by me is around 25m-30m). The ability to switch to manual power adjustment immediately after a TTL exposure is supported and is great as most photographers are control freaks and we like to tune the light within 0.1 stop of what we want (as if anyone can actually tell the difference).

Another feature of the ELB500 TTL is the support for full-time connection to the mains; this allows the ELB500 TTL to work in a studio environment like a non-battery pack studio strobe and enables it able to pull double-duty for both studio and outdoor usage.

Power
The ELB500 TTL is a 500Ws pack and that actually means it can store up to 500Ws of power and release said power in a flash (pun intended) but that is not only important metric. How it releases the power in terms of flash duration, consistency in color & light output as well as what it does when you need to exceed the flash sync speed of your camera are equally important.

From my testing, flash duration is definitely quick enough to provide a very sharp exposure throughout its entire power range; in addition to that, color & power consistency was good despite having to fire off many shots in quick succession.

The HSS (yes, HSS) works great for times you need to overpower the sun; being able to produce enough power at ISO100, F8 for a 1/500s shutter speed with a 120cm octagonal softbox with internal diffusion mounted ~3m from the model is very impressive for such a small pack. Not many strobes can do that and definitely none that I have seen can do that using HSS (as of the time of this blog post).

Finally, there is one additional consideration for flash power : minimum power. There are many situations where a very low power might be desired, like shooting in conditions where you want to preserve the ambiance like a beautiful night scene or like some would love to point out – while photographing babies. In this aspect, the ELB500 TTL delivers completely, able to adjust power anything from max (which is around 6.0) down to 0.1 in 0.1 steps.

The ELB500 Dual To Go Set
As a reminder, the review set I got from the local (Malaysian) distributor was the ELB500 TTL Dual To Go set; which is a set that consists of 2 heads, a ELB500 TTL pack with battery, the ELB 500 Snappy or carrying case, charger, a standard reflector plus a wide angle reflector and the ProTec Location Bag.

This set contains nearly everything a photographer upgrading to real studio strobes for the first time or for a photographer who wishes to great add location lights to his/her arsenal.

Notable items missing for a full practical location lighting set are portable lightstands, a wireless transmitter / trigger (like the a Elinchrom Transmitter Pro), a 3m or 5m extension cable for a flash head and some grids & diffuser for the reflectors.

In the set, the most impressive item (besides the ELB500 TTL itself) remains the ProTec Location Bag. This is the same bag from the ELB400 To Go Set and it can fit 1 battery pack with 2 heads plus reflectors & accessories OR 2 battery packs with 2 heads & accessories. It is well-padded, solidly built and thoughtfully designed; it is honestly as good or better than any photography gear bag I have ever seen or ever used.

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Well… that’s all the positive stuff I can say about the ELB500 TTL. Now its time for some negatives that I haven’t covered :

Elinchrom Transmitter PRO – Canon
To fully utilize the ELB500 TTL’s features, Elinchrom Transmitter PRO – C (or N and to a lesser extent a Phottix Odin II) is essential, so I will deal with some niggling issues with the transmitter.

First of all, the LCD screen orientation and buttons is nearly impossible to see or use when mounted on a tripod as everything faces straight up. This is actually very annoying for low-light or shots where absolute quality & stability is important; an angled display + button layout
(like the Odin II) would fix this problem easily.

Now, related to the problem above is the 2nd issue; when mounted on a newer Canon DSLR (7D Mark II or anything newer), there is actually no way to control power output of individual lighting groups in camera when using TTL. The same feature is supported when using Phottix Odin II when used with the ELB500 TLL.

As a sidenote, the Phottix Odin II isn’t ideal either as a trigger because it cannot trigger any other Elinchrom strobes (not even in manual mode) directly.

Modeling Light Output
Modelling light output control is very well hidden in the ELB500 TTL and there is no way to control the modelling light output remotely via the Elinchrom Transmitter PRO at the moment. Eventhough the modelling output can vary, the variation is actually very small and although I didn’t actually measure the difference between max and min output looks like it is less than a stop which is too narrow a range to be useful.

Non-removable Head Cable
Although this actually makes the overall package more compact, a non-removable cable that is connected to the head all the time actually makes packing slightly trickier and would take up more space if you are looking at using longer cables than the non-removable cable.

Note : Review / test unit for the Elinchrom ELB500 To Go Set was provided free-of-charge by Elinchrom MY / Shriro (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd ; unit has since been returned to provider.  Special thanks goes to That Special Occasion for sponsoring the wedding gown and DM Make-up & Beauty for the make-up & styling.

If you would like to check out a BTS video I made for the shoot that I used the ELB500 TTL for, please click here

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All tests were done with a Canon EOS 5DS-R (firmware v1.1.1R) with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II & Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II triggered with Elinchrom Transmitter PRO – Canon (fiwmare Canon v2.1.0); ELB500 TTL (release firmware); ELB400 (firmware v1.9); Canon 600EX-RT triggered by EL-Skyport Receiver Plus.

Photos taken at Tropical Spice Garden; makeup & styling by Cindy Chang of Beauty Haven; gown by That Special Occasion and bouquet by Ohara Florist; special thanks goes to the couple for allowing me to post these photos online

Special thanks to the couple for allowing me to post these photos online, Cindy Chang of Beauty Haven for makeup & styling; Kombee Wagen for the beautiful classic Vespa; Lok Thye Kee Residences & Majestic Penang for gratiously allowing us to shoot in their properties.

Special thanks goes to the couple for allowing me to post these photos online.

Photos taken at Parkroyal Penang Resort; makeup & styling by Cindy Chang of Beauty Haven; gown by That Special Occasion and bouquet by Ohara Florist

Equipment used
Canon EOS 5Ds-R, Canon EF 85L f/1.2L II, GOSSEN DIGISKY lightmeter, Elinchrom EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus HS, 2x Elinchrom ELB400 with 1x Pro head, 1x HS head, Elinchrom Rotalux Softbox Deep Octa 100cm and various other “stuff”

Some of you might might ask :”*Which* Adobe software specifically?”; its what I call the Adobe Holy Trinity++ – Adobe Photoshop for retouching, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for raw conversion & general image enhancements, Adobe Premiere Pro for the occasional video-editing, Adobe InDesign for album layout and maybe Adobe Illustrator too for the occasional minor edits to our logos (yes, *minor* logo editing IS a thing for photogs :P)

Granted, the main reason we use Adobe software for work is that most if not all Adobe software is stable, powerful and gets the work done but there is another reason : Lack of viable competitor(s) or alternative(s).

However, starting from early 2016… viable and sometimes even better alternatives have started to surface for the Photoshop family; starting with maturity of Phase One’s Capture One Pro as well as DXO’s DXO Optics Pro.

My move away from Adobe’s software started with moving to Capture One Pro from Lightroom nearly 6mths ago and ended with my move from my final Adobe product : Adobe Photoshop, the past week.

[exif id=”1937″]Granted, I do miss the time when I could just open Adobe Creative Cloud and have any software I need launch within a click, the seamless integration between its software but I do not miss Adobe’s pricing model and having to deal with the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the creative arts software world as a simple professional photographer.

Adobe however has never been kind in terms of pricing its products, even before adopting the current model. The single-user licenses back then was expensive and it was only for a single version with small discount for an upgrade; and they do a major version change EVERY year, so basically you more or less HAD to pay Adobe yearly if you want the latest version. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Unless you are like most non-retouchers, you barely learn the new features in the previous year’s version before the next version arrives and you had to pay them again if you want that small little upgrade for that single tool you love to use.

The subscription model is actually quite reasonable to most photographers, priced at USD10.00 per mth you get Lightroom and Photoshop; which was like maybe 1/3 of the price you had to pay for the single-user licenses and you get *free* updates. It is great until… like me, I got royally screwed by a mistake of an Adobe rep that cancelled my Creative Photography (i.e. Lightroom + Photoshop “package”).

That would have been fine if I was in the US or another “developed” country, Adobe apparently goes through a 3rd party for subs in Asia Pacific which they had no direct control over, so Adobe themselves couldn’t reinstate my subscription and I had to resubscribe at a higher price bcoz some exchange rate changes from my initial sub to my local currency vs USD.

After going on live chat with them 4 or 5 times over 2 days, Adobe was finally able to come out with an acceptable solution about 9-days later but it was 9-days too late; as a professional, I NEEDED a retouching software for work. So I tested and founded an actual alternative which does what I wanted for far less & without a subscription model, I actually own the software I bought so that this problem won’t occur again.

p.s. all the photos on this post were edited and processed using non-Adobe software :p

The main concept for the shoot was to use a basic lighting setup to photograph a model with interesting make-up; based on that I would say this was a successful and fun shoot. The following lighting diagram is the basic lighting setup that was used with slight variations throughout the shoot.

For the first series of shots, we set out to light the model in a really typical method using a large softbox to the left of the model. The softbox was placed slightly higher than the model’s head and about 3′ away so to light the left of the model at roughly 45deg above the model. A large 100cm Deep Octa with outer diffuser and a white reflector was used so that colors remain pure and the lighting soft & flattering with adequate fall-off as not to light too much of the dark gray backdrop.

The next set is a little more interesting as the Deep Octa was swapped out of for a 37cm reflector with a diffussion sock and later to the 18cm reflector with grid as the main light; some shots were also done without the fill light to model right and/or without the background light.

And since we were shooting at Keat Camera, it is customary for me to ask them for one of their cameras / gear so that we can include it in the shoot; this time we used a rare Russian or Soviet-made Leica rangefinder clone (or so I was told) but clone or not, it did look really good when the model was holding it.

Another note-worthy aspect of the shoot was there was group a big group of photographers and everyone got their chance to take the shots they wanted using the strobes and that is all thanks to Elinchrom’s great Skyport+ system; for most of the shoot, there are 2 transmitters in use : a EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus HS for Canon and a EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus; the Plus HS was mostly on my camera or a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the Transmitter Plus had a way more interesting “journey”, it was passed between a myriad of cameras from the Fuji XT1 to Nikon D300s, D700, D810 and one time even a Sigma DP3… and sometimes without even getting switched off (Don’t try this at home :P).

It was amazing to me, the strobes and attached flashes fired without missing a beat; often alternating between getting triggered by 2 different transmitters. Though some that know me consider me somewhat of a Elinchrom fanboy or that I get paid for saying good things about them but be assured, I don’t get paid and the only reason I say good things about their equipment is because I truly enjoy using them.

The following is a small gallery of some other shots including BTS and a group photo; thank you for Raymond from Keat for the great BTS shot and Siah Tiong Meng for his amazing group photo. I can’t wait for the next shoot!

Equipment used
Canon EOS 5Ds-R, Canon EF 85L f/1.2L II, GOSSEN DIGISKY lightmeter, Elinchrom EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus HS, 2x Canon 600EX-RT on manual triggered by Elinchrom EL-Skyport Receiver Plus, 2x Elinchrom ELB400 with 1x Pro head, 1x HS head, Elinchrom Rotalux Softbox Deep Octa 100cm, 14cm reflector with frosted diffuser, 18cm reflector, 20deg grid for 18cm reflector and various other “stuff”

Equipment loaned from Regnum Worldwide Sdn Bhd
Elinchrom EL-Skyport Transmitter Plus, 37cm reflector with diffuser “sock”

The preparation for the shoot, starting with an early morning make-up session at one of the model’s home and then driving for nearly 2hrs to reach the coastal regions of Selangor went really smoothly but before we reached the “real” shooting location, we stopped by at a place discovered by my friend / assistant / creative director, an abandoned retirement “home”.

Being abandoned, it was a strange and sorta surreal place, partially built huts, buildings… possibly nearly complete toilet complex and a bridge with no water under it.

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The entire series of shots here was done with a single light with a standard reflector and a bit of my secret sauce, 2 layers of colour gels. All I can say now is I wish I didn’t use 2 layers as it basically sapped most of the power from my strobe but strangely, the photos sorta worked and required less post-processing than normal.

After that, we moved onto our actual planned location, an area of beautiful exposed mangrove with a clean sandy beach. By the time we got to the beach, the equatorial sun of Malaysia was blazing and basically burning everyone alive.

To the credit of my models for the day, Jasmine and Elaine, they didn’t complain or say a word; Miriam, the make-up artist for the shoot was also extremely professional and did a great job making sure their make-ups didn’t melt.

All in all, balancing and sometimes overpowering the equatorial sun at midday on a beach was challenging but I am very grateful I decided to get ELB400 strobe instead of other competing strobes. The ELB400 was (and still is) indeed perfect as a weather-resistant, portable and powerful enough strobe for DSLRs and standard mirrorless cameras that just works in even the most demanding environments in Malaysia and probably any other regions near the equator.

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This year is the 10th year of Canon Photomarathon and this is only the first or maybe second  time that I actually visited this event. As it rained cats & dogs early this morning, I arrived about 2hrs after the event started and most of the participants have already gone off to get their shots for the event.

Despite being late, I spotted many participants wearing this year’s new white Photomarathon T-shirt. Some were shooting on the streets, some at the nearby cafe taking a break, I even spotted a couple on bicycle cyling around the city looking to get their winning shots.

The set-up was impressive with a large Canon stage as the centerpiece at the outdoor foyer of Berjaya Timessquare Kuala Lumpur. Behind the stage was one of the widest registration counters of nearly any local event I have been to. There was also a service counter available to service any Canon photographic equipment for participants and visitors alike.

A row of photography related vendor booths and a Canon display & test booth is also set-up in the area. A lot of Canon photographic equipment including the latest Canon DSLR, the 5D Mark.IV is available there for testing, experience and purchase.

For me the most exciting part is that I was able to test out the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II and the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II. There was also a EF 400 f/2.8L IS II set-up for testing but I did not touch that.

Both the 300 and 35 were amazing and I have included the straight-from-camera test shots in this post.

All in all, this probably one of the greatest  photography events in Malaysia and it is great to see so many people and companies still take photography seriously.

.. and I am hoping for at least another 10 more years of Canon Photomarathon in Malaysia.