I had the opportunity to work with the all new (at least all new as far as it concerns Sony) Elinchrom HS System. In detail I had the new Skyport Plus HS and two ELB400 HS flash heads to play with.
I had many situations in the past where I wished I had something faster than just my boring 1/160s exposure time while working with my Sony a7r and my Elinchrom flashes (this is a limitation set by the physic of the most common camera shutters (I once had a Sony RX1 with leaf shutter and that baby was able to synchronize till 1/800 or even faster)).
1. I wanted to freeze something fast in action
2. I wanted to flash in broad daylight with wide open aperture So I was very eager to try the new Elinchrom HS System, when I heard they would not only produce this great equipment for Canon and Nikon but also for Sony. I contacted Elinchrom immediately to ask when the Sony version would be ready.
And very soon it will be available and I'm very happy for the opportunity I had to test it out few weeks before the official launch. Many thanks to Elinchrom Switzerland for that. It was great to use a portable flash system with 1/4000s even 1/8000s.
The verdict is just simple: It works, it rocks, it's easy to handle, it is flawless in my opinion. If you're looking for a great flash system just go for the Elinchrom HS stuff. Swiss quality ;)
Well an here we go with my images I used the HS system for:
Just an unsuccessful goalie
The background of this image has been created with Cinema4D (the sky is a photo of course). All the images of my girls of this series have been shot in a sports hall. I placed two HS heads left and right of the spot where my girls had to jump. I put marks on the pad so my girls knew where they had to jump to. This mark was also the spot I adjusted manual focus to. And then all I had to do is shout "Aaaaction"! and pull the trigger in the right moment.
The 2nd image: Just a little gravity issue
For this image I put the HS heads and camera on a tripod and a remote trigger on my a7r. I trew the poor toys and stuff of my girls up in the air and tried to catch them in the perfect moment. I made it this way (instead of shooting everything in my little studio) because it was much easier to put all the images of the single objects together later in Photoshop. In the end I added the images of my girls produced the week before in the sports hall.
Well and I cleaned up the mess myself I swear... honestly... fingers not crossed.
Finally the 3rd image: Spring is in the air
I wanted my girls to swing really fast through the air on a rope (we call this an "ape tail" in Switzerland) to make an impression of a fast flying dandelion-seed-ride.
Dandelion seeds where modeled in Cinema4D and ZBrush and rendered together with the background image in Octane for Cinema4D.
And here we go with a few behind the scenes images:
Well hope you had some fun with my images and now let's freeze something more with this cool HS system.