First Look: Elinchrom ELB 1200

If you’re passionate about location photography and use a lot of flash, then you would have heard back in February that Elinchrom replaced their old Ranger RX system. The new system would be a revolution in portability and the ideal power-tool for the most adventurous of photographers. Say hello to the brand new Elinchrom ELB 1200.

Fast forward a few months to the release date and I’ve actually got a pre-production model of the new Elinchrom ELB 1200 to test out! A massive thank you to The Flash Centre for providing me with this unit to put through its paces.

The new Elinchrom ELB 1200 has been built from the ground up. Following the success of ELB 400 and ELC design, Elinchrom has now added large OLED control display, bright dimmable daylight LED modelling lamp and only weighing 4.3kg! However, don’t think the light weight means Elinchrom have cut corners on the build quality. They certainly haven’t! This ELB 1200 is built like a tank. Every button press feels firm and precise. Even the way the head cable locks into the pack and how you connect the battery. You can tell this unit it built to last and be a photographer’s go to flash.

The level of detail Elinchrom had put into this new system was incredible. The LED illuminated on the outlets to show which head is active, now you can turn the head on or off. As well as head recognition, so depending which of the three brand new heads (Pro, Action or HS) you connect to the ELB 1200, it’s able to change settings automatically. Within the new heads you have a 92 CRI dimmable daylight LED which is equivalent to 250w Halogen lamp. Ideal for both still photography and video. On the rear of the heads there is a switch to turn on a silent cooling fan, so no background hmmm when the fan kicks in. To find out more about the ELB 1200’s features, view the list below.

With every battery powered flash unit you need to make sure you’ve got an intelligent battery to power it. Consequently, this is what Elinchrom have done with the ELB 1200 by launching two new batteries, the Battery Air and Battery HD. The Air is a 90 Wh which offers 215 flashes at full power or 80 min of continuous light at full LED power. In addition, the HD which is 144 Wh offers 400 flashes at full power or 120 min of continuous light at full LED power. The Battery Air is included in with ELB 1200 and is allowed as carry-on baggage for travelling. Hence why the name of the battery is Air!

Another feature of these new batteries is the added USB charging port. Perfect for the modern age of mobile devices. Therefore if your iPhone or any other devices is running low on power, connect your USB cable to the ELB battery and away you go. Portable charging on the go and on location.

Obviously, the main reason why The Flash Centre sent me this Elinchrom ELB 1200 kit was to test it out. So that’s what I planned to do, with a mixture of action sports, fitness and some powerlifting shoots. Furthermore, the kit I was using had both an Action head and Pro. As a result, I could try a mixture of freezing movement with flash sync using the Action head. As well as shooting some hi-sync with the Pro head. To see what I got up to over the weekend using the Elinchrom ELB 1200, watch the video below.

Here’s a selection of photos from the various shoots over the weekend. Each one was shot using the ELB 1200. For lighting specific information, click on the photo and read the caption below the image. If you require more information about the photos then please get in touch.

On the tyre shot outside the power of the ELB 1200 was at the max 7.5 – why? So I could really overpower the ambient light. The sun was camera left so acting like a rim light, so all the flashes were facing towards Ryan and the tyre.

I also had the ELB 400 at full power, meaning there must of been almost 2000 watts of flash power on this shoot! Causing the blue in the sky to really pop, as well as the detail within the shot itself. The same processing in Adobe Lightroom has been applied to both photos, therefore the difference is all down to the lighting.

None of this wouldn’t have been possible without the team at The Flash Centre getting in touch with myself. So a huge thank you to them for making this happen. Phil Gee for finding the time to meet in Bristol for a very last minute skateboarding shoot. Ryan Kibble for lifting some heavy weights over and over again. Plus not forgetting James Churchill who not only let me use The Gym Gloucester for both of the fitness shoots but stepped up to the camera for his brief 2 minutes of camera time.

If you have any questions then please feel free to get in touch of leave a comment below.