EP166 Interview With Mark & Simon From Elinchrom UK

I sit down with Mark Cheatham and Simon Burfoot from Elinchrom UK to talk about the two words that matter most when you work with light: accuracy and consistency. We dig into flash vs. continuous, shaping light (not just adding it), why reliable gear shortens your workflow, and Elinchrom’s new LED 100 C—including evenly filling big softboxes and that handy internal battery. We also wander into AI: threats, tools, and why authenticity still carries the highest value.

Links:

• Elinchrom UK store/info: https://elinchrom.co.uk/

• LED 100 C product page: https://elinchrom.co.uk/elinchrom-led-100-c

• Rotalux Deep Octa / strips: https://elinchrom.co.uk/elinchrom-rotalux-deep-octabox-100cm-softbox/

• My workshop dates: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring/

Transcript:

Paul: as quite a lot of, you know, I've had a love affair with Elinchrom Lighting for the past 20 something years. In fact, I'm sitting with one of the original secondhand lights I bought from the Flash Center 21 years ago in London.

And on top of that, you couldn't ask for a nicer set of guys in the UK to deal with. So I'm sitting here about to talk to Simon and Mark from Elinchrom uk.

I'm Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

Paul: So before we get any further, tell me a little bit about who you are, each of you and the team from Elinchrom UK

Mark: After you, Simon.

Simon: Thank you very much, mark.

Mark: That's fine.

Simon: I'm, Simon Burfoot. I have, been in the industry now for longer than I care to think.

35 years almost to the, to the day.

Always been in the industry even before I left school because my father was a photographer and a lighting tutor, working for various manufacturers I was always into photography, and when he started the whole lighting journey. I got on it with him, and was learning from a very young age.

Did my first wedding at 16 years old. Had a Saturday job which turned into a full-time job in a retail camera shop. By the time I was 18, I was managing my own camera shop, in a little town in the Cotswolds called Cirencester. My dad always told me that to be a photographic rep in the industry, you needed to see it from all angles, to get the experience.

So I ended up, working in retail, moving over to a framing company. Finishing off in a prolab, hand printing, wedding photographers pictures, processing E6 and C41, hand correcting big prints for framing for, for customers, which was really interesting and I really enjoyed it. And then ended up working for a company called Leeds Photo Visual, I was a Southwest sales guy for them.

Then I moved to KJP before it became, what we know now as Wex, and got all of the customers back that I'd stolen for them for Leeds. And then really sort of started my career progressing through, and then started to work with Elinchrom, on the lighting side. Used Elinchrom way before I started working with them.

I like you a bit of a love affair. I'd used lots of different lights and, just loved the quality of the light that the Elinchrom system produced. And that's down to a number of factors that I could bore you with, but it's the quality of the gear, the consistency in terms of color, and exposure.

Shooting film was very important to have that consistency because we didn't have Photoshop to help us out afterwards. It was a learning journey, but I, I hit my goal after being a wedding photographer and a portrait photographer in my spare time, working towards getting out on the road, meeting people and being involved in the industry, which I love.

And I think it's something that I'm scared of leaving 'cause I dunno anything else. It's a wonderful industry. It has its quirks, its, downfalls at points, but actually it's a really good group of people and everyone kind of, gets on and we all love working with each other.

So we're friends rather than colleagues.

Paul: I hesitate to ask, given the length of that answer, to cut

Simon: You did ask.

Mark: I know.

Paul: a short story

Mark: was wondering if I was gonna get a go.

Paul: I was waiting to get to end into the podcast and I was about to sign off.

Mark: So, hi Mark Cheatham, sales director for Elinchrom uk this is where it gets a little bit scary because me and Simon have probably known each other for 10 years, yet our journeys in the industry are remarkably similar.

I went to college, did photography, left college, went to work at commercial photographers and hand printers. I was a hand printer, mainly black and white, anything from six by four to eight foot by four foot panels, which are horrible when you're deving in a dish. But we did it.

Paul: To the generation now, deving in a dish doesn't mean anything.

Simon: No, it doesn't.

Mark: And, and when you're doing a eight foot by four foot print and you've got it, you're wearing most of the chemistry. You went home stinking every night. I was working in retail. As a Saturday lad and then got promoted from the Saturday lad to the manager and went to run a camera shop in a little town in the Lake District called Kendall.

I stayed there for nine years. I left there,

went on the road working for a brand called Olympus, where I did 10 years, I moved to Pentax, which became Rico Pentax. I did 10 years there. I've been in the industry all my life. Like Simon, I love the industry.

I did go out the industry for 18 months where I went into the wonderful world of high end commercial vr, selling to blue light military, that sort of thing. And then came back. One of the, original members of Elinchrom uk. I don't do as much photography as Simon I take photos every day, probably too many looking at my Apple storage. I do shoot and I like shooting now and again, but I'm not a constant shooter like you guys i'm not a professional shooter, but when you spent 30 odd years in the industry, and part of that, I basically run the, the medium format business for Pentax. So 645D, 645Z.

Yeah, it was a great time. I love the industry and, everything about it. So, yeah, that's it

Paul: Obviously both of you at some point put your heads together and decided Elinchrom UK was the future. What triggered that and

why do you think gimme your sales pitch for Elinchrom for a moment and then we can discuss the various merits.

Simon: The sales pitch for Elinchrom is fairly straightforward. It's a nice, affordable system that does exactly what most photographers would like. We sell a lot of our modifiers, so soft boxes and things like that to other users, of Prophoto, Broncolor. Anybody else? Because actually the quality of the light that comes out the front of our diffusion material and our specular surfaces on the soft boxes is, is a lot, lot more superior than, than most.

A lot more superior. A lot more

Mark: A lot more superior.

Paul: more superior.

Simon: I'm trying to

Paul: Superior.

Simon: It's superior. And I think Paul, you'll agree,

Paul: it's a lot more,

Simon: You've used different manufacturers over the years and, I think the quality of light speaks for itself.

As a photographer I want consistency. Beautiful light and the effects that the Elinchrom system gives me, I've tried other soft boxes. If you want a big contrasty, not so kind light, then use a cheaper soft box.

If I've got a big tattoo guy full of piercings you're gonna put some contrasty light to create some ambience. Maybe the system for that isn't good enough, but for your standard portrait photographer in a studio, I don't think you can beat the light.

Mark: I think the two key words for Elinchrom products are accuracy and consistency. And that's what, as a portrait photographer, you should be striving for, you don't want your equipment to lengthen your workflow or make your job harder in post-production.

If you're using Elinchrom lights with Elinchrom soft boxes or Elinchrom modifiers, you know that you're gonna get accuracy and consistency. Which generally makes your job easier.

Paul: I think there's a bit that neither of you, I don't think you've quite covered, and it's the bit of the puzzle that makes you want to use whatever is the tool of your trade.

I mean, I worked with musicians, I grew up around orchestras. Watching people who utterly adore the instrument that's in their hand. It makes 'em wanna play it. If you own the instrument that you love to play, whether it's a drum kit a trumpet a violin or a piano, you will play it and get the very best out of your talent with it.

It's just a joy to pick it up and use it for all the little tiny things I think it's the bit you've missed in your descriptions of it is the utter passion that people that use it have for it.

Mark: I think one of the things I learned from my time in retail, which was obviously going back, a long way, even before digital cameras One of the things I learned from retail, I was in retail long before digital cameras, retail was a busier time.

People would come and genuinely ask for advice. So yes, someone would come in and what's the best camera for this? Or what's the best camera for that? Honestly there is still no answer to that. All the kit was good then all the kit is good now. You might get four or five different SLRs out.

And the one they'd pick at the end was the one that they felt most comfortable with and had the best connection with. When you are using something every day, every other day, however it might be, it becomes part of you. I'm a F1 fan, if you love the world of F1, you know that an F1 car, the driver doesn't sit in an F1 car, they become part of the F1 car.

When you are using the same equipment day in, day out, you don't have to think about what button to press, what dial to to turn.

You do it.

And that, I think that's the difference between using something you genuinely love and get on with and using something because that's what you've got. And maybe that's a difference you genuinely love and get on with Elinchrom lights. So yes, they're given amazing output and I know there's, little things that you'd love to see improved on them, but that's not the light output.

Paul: But the thing is, I mean, I've never, I've never heard the F1 analogy, but it's not a bad one.

When you talk about these drivers and their cars and you are right, they're sort of symbiotic, so let's talk a little bit about why we use flash. So from the photographers listening who are just setting out, and that's an awful lot of our audience. I think broadly speaking, there are two roads or three roads, if you include available light if you're a portrait photographer.

So there's available light. There's continuous light, and then there's strobes flash or whatever you wanna call it. Of course, there's, hybrid modeling and all sorts of things, but those are broadly the three ways that you're gonna light your scene or your subject. Why flash? What is it about that instantaneous pulse of light from a xenon tube that so appealing to photographers?

Simon: I think there's a few reasons. The available light is lovely if you can control it, and by that I mean knowing how to use your camera, and control the ambient light. My experience of using available light, if you do it wrong, it can be quite flat and uninteresting.

If you've got a bright, hot, sunny day, it can be harder to control than if it's a nice overcast day. But then the overcast day will provide you with some nice soft, flat lighting. Continuous light is obviously got its uses and there's a lot of people out there using it because what they see is what they get.

The way I look at continuous light is you are adding to the ambient light, adding more daylight to the daylight you've already got, which isn't a problem, but you need to control that light onto the subject to make the subject look more interesting. So a no shadow, a chin shadow to show that that subject is three dimensional.

There are very big limitations with LED because generally it's very unshapable. By that I mean the light is a very linear light. Light travels in straight lines anyway, but with a flash, we can shape the light, and that's why there's different shapes and sizes of modifiers, but it's very difficult to shape correctly -an LED array, the flash for me, gives me creativity. So with my flash, I get a sharper image to start with. I can put the shadows and the light exactly where I want and use the edge of a massive soft box, rather than the center if I'm using a flash gun or a constant light. It allows me to choose how much or how little contrast I put through that light, to create different dynamics in the image.

It allows me to be more creative. I can kill the ambient light with flash rather than adding to it. I can change how much ambient I bring into my flash exposure.

I've got a lot more control, and I'm not talking about TTL, I'm talking about full manual control of using the modifier, the flash, and me telling the camera what I want it to do, rather than the camera telling me what it thinks is right.

Which generally 99% of the time is wrong. It's given me a beautiful, average exposure, but if I wanted to kill the sun behind the subject, well it's not gonna do that. It's gonna give me an average of everything. Whereas Flash will just give me that extra opportunity to be a lot more creative and have a lot more control over my picture.

I've got quite a big saying in my workshops. I think a decent flash image is an image where it looks like flash wasn't used. As a flash photographer, Paul, I expect you probably agree with me, anyone can take a flash image. The control of light is important because anybody can light an image, but to light the subject within the image and control the environmental constraints, is the key to it and the most technical part of it.

Mark: You've got to take your camera off P for professional to do that. You've got to turn it off p for professional and get it in manual mode. And that gives you the control

Paul: Well, you say that,

We have to at some point. Address the fact that AI is not just coming, it's sitting here in

our studios all the time, and we are only a heartbeat away from P for professional, meaning AI analyzed and creating magic.

I don't doubt for a minute. I mean, right now you're right, but not

Mark: Well, at some point it will be integrated into the camera

Paul: Of course it will.

Mark: If you use an iPhone or any other phone, you know, we are using AI as phone photographers, your snapshots. You take your kids, your dogs, whatever they are highly modified images.

Paul: Yeah. But in a lot of the modern cameras, there's AI behind the scenes, for instance, on the focusing

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: While we've, we are on that, we were on that thread.

Let's put us back on that thread for a second. What's coming down the line

with, all lighting and camera craft with ai. What are you guys seeing that maybe we're not

Simon: in terms of flash technology or light technology?

Paul: Alright. I mean, so I mean there's, I guess there's two angles, isn't there?

What are the lights gonna do that use ai? What are the controllers gonna do, that uses ai, but more importantly, how will it hold its own in a world where I can hit a button and say, I want rebrand lighting on that face. I can do that today.

Mark: Yeah.

Simon: I'm not sure the lighting industry is anywhere near producing anything that is gonna give what a piece of software can give, because there's a lot more factors involved. There's what size light it is, what position that light is in, how high that light is, how low that light is.

And I think the software we've all heard and played with Evoto we were talking about earlier, I was very skeptical and dubious about it to start with as everybody would be. I'm a Photoshop Lightroom user, have been for, many years. And I did some editing, in EEvoto with my five free credits to start with, three edits in, I bought some credits because I thought, actually this is very, very good.

I'll never use it for lighting i'd like to think I can get that right myself. However, if somebody gives you a, a very flat image of a family outside and say, well, could you make this better for me? Well, guess what? I can do whatever you like to it. Is it gonna attack the photographer that's trying to earn a living?

I think there's always a need for people to take real photographs and family photographs. I think as photographers, we need to embrace it as an aid to speed up our workflow. I don't think it will fully take over the art of photography because it's a different thing.

It's not your work. It's a computer generated AI piece of work in my head. Therefore, who's responsible for that image? Who owns the copyright to that image? We deal with photographers all the time who literally point a camera, take a picture and spend three hours editing it and tell everyone that,

look at this. The software's really good and it's made you look good. I think AI is capable of doing that to an extent. In five years time, we'll look back at Evoto today and what it's producing and we'll think cracky. That was awful. It's like when you watch a high definition movie from the late 1990s, you look at it and it was amazing at the time, but you look at it now and you think, crikey, look at the quality of it.

I dunno if we're that far ahead where we won't get to that point. The quality is there. I mean, how much better can you go than 4K, eight K minus, all that kind of stuff. I'm unsure, but I don't think the AI side of it. Is applicable to flash at this moment in time? I don't know.

Mark: I think you're right.

To look at the whole, photography in general. If you are a social photographer, family photographer, whatever it might be, you are genuinely capturing that moment in time that can't be replaced.

If you are a product photographer, that's a different matter. I think there's more of a threat.

I think I might be right in saying.

I was looking, I think I saw it on, LinkedIn. There is a fashion brand in the UK at the moment that their entire catalog of clothing has been shot without models.

When you look at it on the website, there's models in it. They shoot the clothing on mannequins and then everything else is AI generated they've been developing their own AI platform now for a number of years. Does the person care Who's buying a dress for 30 quid?

Probably not, but if you are photographing somebody's wedding, graduation, some, you know, a genuine moment in someone's life, I think it'd be really wrong to use any sort of AI other than a little bit of post-production, which we know is now quite standard for many people in the industry.

Paul: Yeah, the curiosity for me is I suspect as an industry,

Guess just released a full AI model advert in, Vogue. Declared as AI generated an ai agency created it. Everything about it is ai. There's no real photography involved except in the learning side of it.

And that's a logical extension of the fact we've been Photoshopping to such a degree that the end product no longer related to the input. And we've been doing that 25 years. I started on Photoshop version one, whatever that was, 30 years More than 33.

So we've kind of worked our way into a corner where the only way out of it is to continue.

There's no backtracking now.

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: I think the damage to the industry though, or the worry for the industry, I think you're both right. I think if you can feel it, touch it, be there, there will always be that importance. In fact, the provenance of authenticity. Is the high value ticket item now,

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: because you, everything else is synthetic, you can trust nothing. We are literally probably months away from 90% of social media being generated by ai. AI is both the consumer and the generator of almost everything online

Mark: Absolutely.

Paul: Goodness knows where we go. You certainly can't trust anything you read. You can't trust anything you see, so authenticity, face-to-face will become, I think a high value item.

Yeah.

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: I think one problem for us as an industry in terms of what the damage might be is that all those people that photograph nameless products or create books, you know, use photography and then compositing for, let's say a novel that's gone, stock libraries that's gone because they're faceless.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: there doesn't have to be authentic. A designer can type in half a dozen keywords. Into an AI engine and get what he needs. If he doesn't get what he needs, he does it again. All of those photographers who currently own Kit are gonna look around with what do we do now?

And so for those of us who specialize in weddings and portraits and family events, our market stands every chance of being diluted, which has the knock on effect of all of us having to keep an eye on AI to stay ahead of all competitors, which has the next knock on effect, that we're all gonna lean into ai, which begs the question, what happens after Because that's what happened in the Photoshop world.

You know, I'm kind of, I mean, genuinely cur, and this will be a running theme on the podcast forever, is kind of prodding it and taking barometer readings as to where are we going?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, who's more at threat at the moment from this technology?

Is it the photographer or is it the retouch? You know, we do forget that there are retouchers That is their, they're not photographers.

Paul: I don't forget. They email me 3, 4, 5 times a day.

Mark: a

Simon: day,

Mark: You know, a highly skilled retouch isn't cheap. They've honed their craft for many years using whatever software product they prefer to use.

I think they're the ones at risk now more so than the photographer. And I think we sort of lose sight of that. Looking at it from a photographer's point of view, there is a whole industry behind photography that actually is being affected more so than you guys at the moment.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: Yeah, I think there's truth in that, but. It's not really important. Of course, it's really important to all of those people, but this is the digital revolution that we went through as film photographers, and probably what the Daguerreotype generators went through when Fox Tolbert invented the first transfer.

Negative. You know, they are, there are always these epochs in our industry and it wipes out entire skillset.

You know, I mean, when we went to digital before then, like you, I could dev in a tank.

Yeah. You know, and really liked it. I like I see, I suspect I just like the solitude,

Mark: the dark,

Paul: red light in the dark

Mark: yeah.

Paul: Nobody will come in.

Not now. Go away. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. But of course those skills have gone, has as, have access to the equipment.

I think we're there again, this feels like to me a huge transition in the industry and for those who want to keep up, AI is the keeping up whether you like it or not.

Mark: Yeah. And if you don't like it, we've seen it, we're in the middle of a massive resurgence in film photography,

which is great for the industry, great for the retail industry, great for the film manufacturers, chemical manufacturers, everything.

You know, simon, myself, you, you, we, we, our earliest photography, whether we were shooting with flash, natural light, we were film shooters and that planes back.

And what digital did, from a camera point of view, is make it easier and more accessible for less skilled people.

But it's true. You know, if you shot with a digital camera now that's got a dynamic range of 15 stops, you actually don't even need to have your exposure, that accurate Go and shoot with a slide film that's got dynamic range of less than one stop and see how good you are.

It has made it easier. The technology, it will always make it. Easier, but it opens up new doors, it opens up new avenues to skilled people as well as unskilled people. If you want, I'm using the word unskilled again, I'm not being, a blanket phrase, but it's true. You can pick up a digital camera now and get results that same person shooting with a slide film 20 years ago would not get add software to that post-production, everything else.

It's an industry that we've seen so many changes in over the 30 odd years that we've been in it,

Simon: been

Mark: continue

Simon: at times. It exciting

Mark: The dawn of digital photography to the masses. was amazing.

I was working for Olympus at the time when digital really took off and for Olympus it was amazing. They made some amazing products. We did quite well out of it and people started enjoying photography that maybe hadn't enjoyed photography before.

You know, people might laugh at, you know, you, you, you're at a wedding, you're shooting a really nice wedding pool and there's always a couple of guests there which have got equipment as good as yours. Better, better than yours. Yeah. Got

Simon: jobs and they can afford it.

Mark: They've got proper jobs. Their pitches aren't going to be as good as yours.

They're the ones laughing at everyone shooting on their phone because they've spent six grand on their new. Camera. But if shooting on a phone gets people into photography and then next year they buy a camera and two years later they upgrade their camera and it gets them into the hobby of photography?

That's great for everyone. Hobbyists are as essential, as professional photographers to the industry. In fact, to keep the manufacturers going, probably more so

Simon: the hobbyists are a massive part. Even if they go out and spend six or seven or 8,000 pounds on a camera because they think it's gonna make them a better photographer. Who knows in two years time with the AI side, maybe it will. That old saying, Hey Mr, that's a nice camera.

I bet it takes great pictures, may become true. We have people on the lighting courses, the workshops we run, the people I train and they're asking me, okay, what sessions are we gonna use? And I'm saying, okay, well we're gonna be a hundred ISO at 125th, F 5.6. Okay, well if I point my camera at the subject, it's telling me, yeah, but you need to put it onto manual.

And you see the color drain out their faces. You've got a 6,000 pound camera and you've never taken it off 'P'.

Mark: True story.

Simon: And we see this all the time. It's like the whole TTL strobe manual flash system. The camera's telling you what it wants to show you, but that maybe is not what you want.

There are people out there that will spend a fortune on equipment but actually you could take just as good a picture with a much smaller, cheaper device with an nice bit of glass on the front if you know what you're doing. And that goes back to what Mark was saying about shooting film and slide film and digital today.

Paul: I, mean, you know, I don't want this to be an echo chamber, and so what I am really interested in though, is the way that AI will change what flash photography does.

I'm curious as to where we are headed in that, specific vertical. How is AI going to help and influence our ability to create great lip photography using flash?

Mark: I think,

Paul: I love the fact the two guys side and looked at each other.

Mark: I,

Simon: it's a difficult question to answer.

Mark: physical light,

Simon: is a difficult question to answer because if you're

Mark: talking about the physical delivery of light.

Simon: Not gonna change.

Mark: Now,

The only thing I can even compare it to, if you think about how the light is delivered, is what's the nearest thing?

What's gotta change? Modern headlamps on cars, going back to cars again, you know, a modern car are using these LED arrays and they will switch on and switch off different LEDs depending on the conditions in front of them. Anti dazzle, all this sort of stuff. You know, the modern expensive headlamp is an amazing technical piece of kit.

It's not just one ball, but it's hundreds in some cases of little arrays. Will that come into flash? I don't know. Will you just be able to put a soft box in front of someone and it will shape the light in the future using a massive array. Right? I dunno it,

Simon: there's been many companies tested these arrays, in terms of LED Flash,

And I think to be honest, that's probably the nearest it's gonna get to an AI point of view is this LED Flash.

Now there's an argument to say, what is flash if I walk into a living room and flick the light on, on off really quickly, is that a flash?

Mark: No, that's a folock in

Paul: me

Mark: turn, big lights off.

Paul: Yeah.

Mark: So

Simon: it,

you, you might be able to get these arrays to flush on and off. But LED technology, in terms of how it works, it's quite slow.

It's a diode, it takes a while for it to get to its correct brightness and it takes a while for it to turn off. To try and get an LED. To work as a flash. It, it's not an explosion in a gas field tube. It's a a, a lighter emitting diode that is, is coming on and turning off again. Will AI help that? Due to the nature of its design, I don't think it can.

Mark: Me and s aren't invented an AI flash anytime soon by the looks of, we're

Simon: it's very secret.

Mark: We're just putting everyone off Paul,

Simon: It's alright.

Mark: just so they don't think

Simon: Yeah,

Mark: Oh, it's gonna be too much hard work and we'll sort it.

Paul: It's definitely coming.

I don't doubt for a minute that this is all coming because there's no one not looking at anything

Simon: that makes perfect sense.

Paul: Right now there's an explosion of invention because everybody's trying to find an angle on everything.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: The guys I feel the most for are the guys who spent millions, , on these big LED film backdrop walls.

Simon: Yep.

Mark: So you can

Paul: a car onto a flight sim, rack, and then film the whole lot in front of an LED wall. Well, it was great. And there was a market for people filming those backdrops, and now of course that's all AI generated in the LED, but that's only today's technology.

Tomorrow's is, you don't need the LED wall.

That's here today. VEO3 and Flow already, I mean, I had to play with one the other day for one of our lighting diagrams and it animated the whole thing. Absolute genius.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: I still generated the original diagram.

Mark: Yeah,

Paul: Yeah, that's useful. There's some skill in there still for now, but, you gotta face the music that anything that isn't, I can touch it and prod it. AI's gonna do it.

Mark: Absolutely. If you've ever seen the series Mandalorian go and watch the making of the Mandalorian and they are using those big LED walls, that is their backdrop.

Yeah. And it's amazing how fast they shift from, you know, they can, they don't need to build a set. Yeah. They shift from scene to scene.

Paul: Well, aI is now building the scenes. But tomorrow they won't need the LED wall. 'cause AI will put it in behind the actors.

Mark: Yeah. Say after

Paul: that you won't need the actors because they're being forced to sign away the rights so that AI can be used. And even those that are standing their ground and saying no, well, the actors saying Yes. Are the ones being hired.

You know, in the end, AI is gonna touch all of it. And so I mean, it's things like, imagine walking into a studio. Let's ignore the LED thing for a minute, by the way, that's a temporary argument,

Simon: I know you're talking about.

Paul: about today's,

Simon: You're about the.

Mark: days

Paul: LEDs,

Simon: we're in, We're in very, very interesting times and. I'm excited for the future. I'm excited for the new generation of photographers that are coming in to see how they work with what happens.

We've gone from fully analog to me selling IMACON drum scanners that were digitizing negatives and all the five four sheet almost a shoot of properties for an estate agent were all digitized on an hassle blood scanner. And then the digital camera comes out and you start using it. It was a Kodak camera, I think the first SLRI used,

Paul: Yeah.

Simon: and you get the results back and you think, oh my God, it looks like it's come out of a practica MTL five B.

Mark: But

Simon: then suddenly

the technology just changes and changes and changes and suddenly it's running away with itself and where we are today. I mean, I, I didn't like digital to start with. It was too. It was too digital.

It was too sharp. It didn't have the feel of film, but do you know what?

We get used to it and the files that my digital mirrorless camera provide now and my Fuji GFX medium format are absolutely stunning. But the first thing I do is turn the sharpness down because they are generally over sharp. For a lovely, beautifully lit portrait or whatever that anybody takes, it just needs knocking back a bit.

We were speaking about this earlier,

I did some comparison edits from what I'd done manually in Photoshop to the Evoto. Do you know what the pre-selected edits are? Great. If you not the slider back from 10 to about six, you're there or thereabouts?

More is not always good.

Mark: I think when it comes to imagery in our daily lives,

the one thing that drives what we expect to see is TV and most people's TVs, everything's turned up to a hundred.

The color, the contrast, that was a bit of a shock originally from the film to digital, crossover. Everything went from being relatively natural to way over the top

Just getting back to AI and how it's gonna affect people like you and people that we work with day to day.

I don't think we should be worried about that. We should be worried about the images we see on the news, not what we're seeing, hanging on people's walls and how they're gonna be affected by ai.

That generally does affect everyone's daily life.

Paul: Yeah,

Mark: Yeah. But what

Paul: people now ask me, for instance, I've photographed a couple head shots yesterday, and the one person had not ironed her blouse.

And her first question was, can we sort that out in post? So this is the knock on effect people are becoming aware of what's possible.

What's that? Nothing.

Know, and the, the smooth clothing button in Evoto will get me quite a long way down that road and saves somebody picking up an eye and randomly, it's not me, it's now actually more work for me 'cause I shouldn't have to do it.

But, you know, this

is my point about the knock on effect. Our worlds are different. So I didn't really intend this to be just a great sort of circular conversation about AI cars and, future technology. It was more, I dunno, we ended up down there anyway.

Simon: We went down a rabbit hole.

Mark: A

Paul: rabbit hole.

Yeah

Mark: was quite an interesting one.

Simon: And I'm sorry if you've wasted your entire journey to work and we

Paul: Yeah.

Simon: Alright. It wasn't intended to be like that.

Paul: I think it's a debate that we need to be having and there needs to be more discussion about it. Certainly for anybody that has a voice in the industry and people are listening to it because right now it might be a toddler of a technology, but it's growing faster than people realize.

There is now a point in the written word online where AI is generating more than real people are generating, and AI is learning that. So AI is reading its own output. That's now beginning to happen in imagery and film and music.

Simon: Well,

even in Google results, you type in anything to a Google search bar. When it comes back to the results, the first section at the top is the AI generated version. And you know what, it's generally

Paul: Yep.

Simon: good and

Paul: turn off all the rest of it now. So it's only ai.

Simon: Not quite brave enough for that yet. No, not me.

Mark: In terms

Paul: of SEO for instance, you now need to tune it for large language models.

You need to be giving. Google the LLM information you want it to learn so that you become part of that section on a website. And it, you know, this is where we are and it's happening at such a speed, every day I am learning something new about something else that's arriving. And I think TV and film is probably slightly ahead of the photography industry

Mark: Yeah.

Paul: The pressures on the costs are so big,

Simon: Yes.

Paul: Whereas the cost differential, I'm predicting our costs will actually go up, not down.

Whereas in TV and film, the cost will come down dramatically.

Mark: Absolutely.

Simon: They are a horrifically high level anyway. That's

Paul: I'm not disputing that, but I watched a demo of some new stuff online recently and they had a talking head and they literally typed in relight that with a kiss light here, hairlight there, Rembrandt variation on the front.

And they did it off a flat picture and they can move the lights around as if you are moving lights. Yes. And that's there today. So that's coming our way too. And I still think the people who understand how to see light will have an advantage because you'll know when you've typed these words in that you've got it about right.

It doesn't change the fact that it's going to be increasingly synthetic.

The moment in the middle of it is real. We may well be asked to relight things, re clothe things that's already happening.

Simon: Yeah.

Paul: We get, can you just fill in my hairline? That's a fairly common one.

Just removing a mole. Or removing two inches round a waist. This, we've been doing that forever.

Simon: Mm-hmm.

Paul: And so now it'll be done with keyword generation rather than, photoshop necessarily.

Simon: I think you'll always have the people that embrace this, we can't ignore it as you rightly say.

It's not going away. It's gonna get bigger, it's gonna feature more in our lives.

I think there's gonna be three sets of people. It's gonna be the people like us generally on a daily basis. We're photographers or we're artists. We enjoy what we do. I enjoy correctly lighting somebody with the correct modifier

properties to match light quality to get the best look and feel and the ambience of that image. And I enjoy the process of putting that together and then seeing the end result afterwards. I suppose that makes me an artist in, in, in loose terms. I think, you know, as, as, as a photographer, we are artists.

You've then got another generation that are finding shortcuts. They're doing some of the job with their camera. They're making their image from an AI point of view. Does that make up an artist? I suppose it still does because they're creating their own art, but they have no interest 'cause they have no enjoyment in making that picture as good as it can be before you even hit the shutter. And then I think you've got other people, and us to an extent where you do what you need to do, you enjoy the process, you look at the images, and then you just finely tune it with a bit of AI or Photoshop retouching

so I think there are different sets of people that will use AI to their advantage or completely ignore it.

Mark: Yeah. I think you're right. And I think it comes down, I'm going to use another analogy here, you, you know, let's say you enjoy cooking. If you enjoy cooking, you're creating something. What's the alternative? You get a microwave meal.

Well, Paul

Simon: and Sarah do.

Mark: No.

Paul: Sarah does.

Simon: We can't afford waitress.

Mark: You might spend months creating your perfect risotto.

You've got it right.

You love it. Everyone else loves it. You share it around all your friends. Brilliant. Or you go to Waitrose, you buy one, put it three minutes in the microwave and it's done.

That's yer AI I Imagery, isn't it? It's a microwave meal.

Paul: There's a lot of microwave meals out there. And not that many people cook their own stuff and certainly not as many as used to. And there's a lesson.

Simon: Is,

Mark: but also,

Simon: things have become easier

Mark: there

Simon: you go.

Mark: I think what we also forget in the photographic industry and take the industry as a whole, and this is something I've experienced in the, in the working for manufacturers in that photography itself is, is a, is a huge hobby.

There's lots of hobbyist photographers, but there's actually more people that do photography as part of another hobby, birdwatching, aviation, all that sort of thing. Anything, you know, the photography isn't the hobby, it's the birds that are the hobby, but they take photographs of, it's the planes that are the hobby, but they take photographs.

They're the ones that actually keep the industry going and then they expand into other industries. They come on one of our workshops. You know, that's something that we're still and Simon still Absolutely. And yourself, educating photographers to do it right, to

practice using the gear the right way, but the theory of it and getting it right.

If anything that brings more people into wanting to learn to cook better,

Paul: you

Mark: have

more chefs rather than people using microwave meals. Education's just so important. And when it comes to lighting, I wasn't competent in using flash. I'm still not, but having sat through Simon's course and other people's courses now for hundreds of times, I can light a scene sometimes,

people

are still gonna be hungry for education.

I think some wills, some won't. If you wanna go and get that microwave risotto go and microwave u risotto. But there's always gonna be people that wanna learn how to do it properly, wanna learn from scratch, wanna learn the art of it.

Creators and in a creative industry, we've got to embrace those people and bring more people into it and ensure there's more people on that journey of learning and upskilling and trying to do it properly.

Um, and yes, if they use whatever technology at whatever stage in their journey, if they're getting enjoyment from it, what's it matter?

Paul: Excellent.

Mark: What a fine

Paul: concluding statement. If they got enjoyment outta it. Yeah. Whatever. Excellent. Thank you, Mark, for your summing up.

Simon: In conclusion,

Paul: did that just come out your nose?

What on earth.

Mark: What

Paul: what you can't see, dear Listener is the fact that Mark just spat his water everywhere, laughing at Si.

It's been an interesting podcast. Anyway, I'm gonna drag this back onto topic for fear of it dissolving into three blokes having a pint.

Mark: I think we should go for one.

Simon: I think,

Paul: I think we should know as well.

Having said that with this conversation, maybe not. I was gonna ask you a little bit about, 'cause we've talked about strobes and the beauty of strobes, but of course Elinchrom still is more than that, and you've just launched a new LED light, so I know you like Strobe Simon.

Now talk about the continuous light that also Elinchrom is producing.

Simon: We have launched the Elinchrom LED 100 C. Those familiar with our Elinchrom One and Three OCF camera Flash system. It's basically a smaller unit, but still uses the OCF adapter.

Elinchrom have put a lot of time into this. They've been looking at LED technology for many years, and I've been to the factory in Switzerland and seen different LED arrays being tested. The problem we had with LEDs is every single LED was different and put out a different color temperature.

We're now manufacturing LEDs in batches, where they can all be matched. They all come from the same serial number batch. And the different colors of LED as well, 15 years ago, blue LEDs weren't even possible. You couldn't make a blue LED every other color, but not blue for some unknown reason.

They've got the colors right now, they've got full RGB spectrum, which is perfectly accurate a 95 or 97 CRI index light. It's a true hundred watts, of light as well. From tosin through to past daylight and fully controllable like the CRO flash system in very accurate nth degrees.

The LED array in the front of the, the LEDA hundred is one of the first shapeable, fully shapeable, LED arrays that I've come across and I've looked at lots.

By shapeable, I mean you put it into a soft box, of any size and it's not gonna give you a hotspot in the middle, or it's not gonna light the first 12 inches of the middle of the soft box and leave the rest dark.

I remember when we got the first LD and Mark got it before me

And he said, I've put it onto a 70 centimeter soft box. And he said, I've taken a picture to the front. Look at this. And it was perfectly even from edge to edge. When I got it, I stuck it onto a 1 3 5 centimeter soft box and did the same and was absolutely blown away by how even it was from edge to edge.

When I got my light meter out, if you remember what one of those is, uh, it, uh, it gave me a third of a stop different from the center to the outside edge. Now for an LED, that's brilliant. I mean, that's decent for a flash, but for an LED it's generally unheard of. So you can make the LED as big as you like.

It's got all the special effects that some of the cheaper Chinese ones have got because people use that kind of thing. Apparently I have no idea what for. But it sits on its own in a market where there are very cheap and cheerful LEDs, that kind of do a job. And very expensive high-end LEDs that do a completely different job for the photographer that's gone hybrid and does a bit of shooting, but does a bit of video work.

So, going into a solicitor's or an accountant's office where they want head shots, but also want a bit of talking head video for the MD or the CEO explaining about his company on the website. It's perfect. You can up the ISO and use the modeling lamp in generally the threes, the fives, the ones that we've got, the LEDs are brilliant.

But actually the LED 100 will give you all your modifier that you've taken with you, you can use those. It's very small and light, with its own built-in battery and it will give you a very nice low iso. Talking head interview with a lovely big light source.

And I've proved the point of how well it works and how nice it is at the price point it sits in. But it is our first journey into it. There will be others come in and there'll be an app control for it. And I think from an LED point of view, you're gonna say, I would say this, but actually it's one of the nicer ones I've used.

And when you get yours, you can tell people exactly the same.

Paul: Trust me,

I will.

Simon: Yes.

Mark: I think

Paul: very

excited about it.

Mark: I think the beauty

of it as well is it's got an inbuilt battery.

It'll give

you up to 45 minutes on a full charge.

You can plug it in and run it off the mains directly through the USB socket as well. But it means it's a truly portable light source. 45 minutes at a hundred watt and it's rated at a hundred watt actual light output. It's seems far in excess of that.

When you actually,

Simon: we had a photographer the other day who used it and he's used to using sort of 3, 2 50, 300 watt LEDs and he said put them side by side at full power.

They were virtually comparable.

Paul: That is certainly true, or in my case by lots.

Simon: I

seem to be surrounded

Paul: by Elinchrom kit,

Which is all good. So for anybody who's interested in buying one of these things, where'd you get them? How much are they?

Simon: The LED itself, the singlehead unit is 499 inc VAT.

If you want one with a charger, which sounds ridiculous, but there's always people who say, well, I don't want the charger. You can have one with a charger for 50 quid extra. So 549. The twin kit is just less than a thousand quid with chargers. And it comes in a very nice portable carry bag to, to carry them around in.

Um, and, uh, yeah, available from all good photographic retailers, and, Ellen crom.co uk.

Paul: Very good. So just to remind you beautiful people listening to this podcast, we only ever feature people and products, at least like this one where I've said, put a sales pitch in because I use it.

It's only ever been about what we use here at the studio. I hate the idea of just being a renta-voice.

You it.

Mark: bought it.

Paul: Yeah. That's true. You guys sold it to me.

Mark: Yeah,

Simon: if I gave you

anything you'd tell everyone it was great. So if you buy it, no, I've bought

Paul: Yeah. And

then became an ambassador for you. As with everything here, I put my money where my mouth is, we will use it. We do use it. I'm really interested in the little LED light because I could have done with that the other night. It would've been perfect for a very particular need. So yes, I can highly recommend Elinchrom Fives and Threes if you're on a different system.

The Rotalux, system of modifier is the best on the planet. Quick to set up, quick to take down. More importantly, the light that comes off them is just beautiful, whether it's a Godox, whether it's on a ProPhoto, which it was for me, or whether if you've really got your common sense about you on the front of an Elinchrom.

And on that happy note and back to where we started, which is about lighting, I'm gonna say thanks to the guys. They came to the studio to fix a problem but it's always lovely to have them as guests here. Thank you, mark. Thank you Simon. Most importantly, you Elinchrom for creating Kit is just an absolute joy to use.

If you've enjoyed the podcast, please head over to all your other episodes. Please subscribe and whatever is your podcast, play of choice, whether it's iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or a other. After you head, if you head across to masteringportraitphotography.com the spiritual home of this, particular, podcast, I will put in the show notes all the little bits of detail and where to get these things.

I'll get some links off the guys as to where to look for the kit. Thank you both. I dunno when I'll be seeing you again. I suspect it will be the Convention in January if I know the way these things go.

Simon: We're not gonna get invited back, are we?

Mark: Probably not. Enough.

Paul: And I'm gonna get a mop and clean up that water. You've just sprayed all over the floor.

What is going on?

Simon: wish we'd video. That was a funny sun

Mark: I just didn't expect it and never usually that sort of funny and quick,

Simon: It's the funniest thing I've ever seen.

Paul: On that happy note, whatever else is going on in your lives, be kind to yourself. Take care.

In this episode, I get to very briefly chat with Louis Wahl, CEO of WEX Photo Video. Turns out he is a really nice guy (and with luck, I'll get to chat to him in a full-length interview at some point in the future.) It's the great thing about the photography show - I get to meet loads of people!

As well as the short chat, the episode is primarily a response to an email I received from 'Steve' asking what first strobe he should choose.  Having sat and pieced together an answer, I thought it would be useful to make a podcast out of the answer.  I guess you can be the judge of that!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] My name is Lewis Wall, and I'm the CEO of Wexphoto Video. Okay. So maybe this needs just a little explanation at the photography show last week, which was a blast. I took my little handheld recorder and just grabbed a few people as I wanted ran the show. And I had a vision of creating one big podcast episode where multiple photographers could answer the same question.

[00:00:25] Just questions about the industry, how they felt and why they were, where they're at the show. But when I played them back for a couple of reasons, I didn't think that that was going to work mostly. And you'll hear this in this little snippet. I get quite excited and an hour of that. Well, nobody needs that in their life.

[00:00:42] So instead I'm going to sprinkle these little clips. Through some upcoming podcasts just for interest. And so you can hear the views. I have some really interesting people in our industry.

[00:00:53] And I started with this guy. Now I bumped into him. And by accident. I was buying a memory card for the recorder. Actually. I needed additional memory card. And so I went and queued at warehouse express, WEX photo and video. Standing there quietly in the queue and the next chapter at the till waved his arm at me, I went over and while I was there, I noticed that it was Louis. It said on his badge CEO. Of WEX photo video. And do you know what I thought I chance, my arm and see if he would be willing to do a short interview. Well, you couldn't have met a nicer guy. And he was very willing to give me a few, a little bit of a viewpoint. And so we grabbed just five minutes and this is that interview.

[00:01:33] And I start the conversation with why. Do you come to the photography show? This is where our customers are, uh, and they expect to get the service that we provide to them all the time in the stores, and we provide to them online, as well as our institutional customers, a lot of our professional customers, so, yeah, I mean, this has got to be the place to be.

[00:01:52] Where else wouldn't you be at a time like this? This is a brilliant place for us to meet our customers. And, of course, I have to ask you, well, I guess it's an obvious question, but you're a supplier to this incredible industry. Why do you love the photography industry so much? Well, the one thing is that I don't come from a photographic background myself.

[00:02:10] I actually come from a kind of a radio television production background. But it's all about the intrinsic desire that our customers have to accomplish something. There's an artistic need, so We've got a mission, which is to help our customers get the perfect shot every time and anytime. People come to us not to buy a black box with a camera in it.

[00:02:31] They come to us because they've got a problem, and that's brilliant. So they've got a project, they've got a creative spark, they want to achieve something. And all of the people who work with us, they're all photographers as well. So they've all started with some kind of imaging or background, a creative background.

[00:02:46] My last question, this is just a very short set of snippets, but my last question is if you could change just one thing about this beautiful industry of ours, what would it be? That's a tough one. I wouldn't necessarily say it was a perfect industry. I wouldn't say it was problematic.

[00:03:02] It's, what would I change? I'd probably make it a bit easier for us to understand how people work. Product is flowing through from the developers, the people who are originally designing it all the way through the end user. 'cause that's often a very translucent, it's almost opaque, so you don't quite understand what's happening there.

[00:03:21] Sometimes the big brands will tell you a little bit more about where their thinking is, how they want to develop their technology. But I think what happens is you get a lot of customers who they want to see that they actually wanna see that where, where the technology's going. Because again, they've got these objectives and often it.

[00:03:37] You know, it's kind of cased in a little bit of secrecy. I kind of understand that. If you're developing technology, you want to protect it. You want to protect your intellectual property. But that's probably the only thing I would say that's a little bit problematic, yeah? I mean, we went through such a long period of difficulty in terms of production supply.

[00:03:56] People were very difficult to find stuff. Um, we're kind of through that now. We can get pretty much what we need. Um, but, uh, you kind of feel this, probably me as not a terribly, um, technologically, uh, kind of genius sort of person. You kind of, well, where does it go next? And I think a lot of people kind of think in that way too.

[00:04:15] They want to compete, they want to, they want to grow, they want to develop. So, yeah, I'd say that's probably one area. It's like, what does it look like? You know, what does the future look like? That's probably one question everybody's got. What does the future look like? It's funny, in the last episode I did, one of my laments was, I wish more of the kit was designed with the photographers that are going to use it in mind, as opposed to the guys developing it with their, you know, various bits of interfaces and the way the software, it's all software driven now, everything is software.

[00:04:44] Um, and I wish there were more people who are photographers involved in the design phase. But listen, what an absolute pleasure, thank you both for your good service, I've just bought, A very small memory card from you, but over the years, I've spent many thousands with you, but thank you for it. It's my pleasure.

[00:04:59] Thank you so much. So, like I said, you can hear me getting very excited, but what a thoroughly decent guy and of course, warehouse express WEX photo video. Is one of those bastions of the industry. It's huge. And it's ultra reliable. I've bought a ton of kit. From them over the years and I'm sure I will continue to do so.

[00:05:19] And it was a real pleasure to meet Louis a genuinely nice guy. At least he was in the few minutes I got to chat to him. And hopefully I did leave with a seed that I'll go over and maybe get a chance to record a full length interview with him. Cause I think the insights. From some of our trade suppliers. Would be fascinating for all of us because they've seen the trends and they've got the data on it.

[00:05:41] Whereas each of us. Our, in our little silos. So one after the other, I will introduce these little interviews into each of the upcoming podcasts. I'm Paul. And this is the mastering portrait photography podcast.

[00:05:56] So hello. One and all, I hope you well on this, I see quite bright and sunny Sunday evening. It's not particularly warm, but at least for a moment, it isn't. raining yesterday, dance the showers quite a bit. It was a good day yesterday. I've had a good week, lots and lots going on. As you can imagine, we had a training workshop here on Monday, which was an absolute blast.

[00:06:33] It was so much fun. We called it a mastering extraordinary to sorry, mastery can't even get my own titles right. Mastering Ordinary To Extraordinary Studio Photography, which is basically about shooting in reasonably confined spaces.

[00:06:47] And the guys that came in the workshop with just brilliant. We laughed all day the models big shout out to Kinga and to Libby who were brilliant. The two guys who modeled for us and the whole thing about having a good time, enjoying being creative learning as we go Was just the whole, the whole workshop the whole day. It was fantastic.

[00:07:09] So thank you to everyone who came. Also this week. I had two shoots yesterday. You forgive me for telling this story. It was that. It was a good day. Lovely clients, but I did that thing that I do so often, which is to get people's names muddled. And this is yet another one of those extreme examples. Sophie and Matt were the couple and Bertie was their dog. So as we're heading out into the garden to take some pictures in daylight, I'm just double checking their names.

[00:07:38] I've got, my phone it's got the appointment on it. I'm just very quickly scanning it to make sure I've got everything I need. It's Sophie and Matt, Sophie and Matt, Sophie and Matt. I've literally, as I put my phone in my pocket. I turned to them and say, right, so Alice and Sam, what are we going to do? And the two of them just look at me. Are you absolutely out of your mind? And the minute they looked at me, I knew I'd got it wrong.

[00:08:05] How, how, how can your brain ditch what you've just been reading. I mean, literally, as I said, it. It was seconds after I'd read it. The only name I remembered it was Bertie the dog. It was just, oh, come on. Anyway. Saturday was interesting in as much as, although we've had the alien crumb kit in now for a week or so, saturday was the first day when I've had two full shoots going at my normal pace.

[00:08:34] But with all of this new equipment on the upside, let's talk about the upside. The light that they give off is beautiful. And I remember now why I originally chose Elinchrom and why, even when I was using Profoto kit, I would still put Elinchrom modifiers back in to the mix. The light we're getting is just beautiful.

[00:08:55] And it, it seems to play really well in our studio. Now, every studio is different. Every photographer's tastes and color profiles, are different. For me, for what I do in the space. I do it, there was a proper magic in the studio and it was, it's hard to describe, but I actually felt quite emotional. That said none of the kids did what I expected to when I expected it. One light turned itself off, eventually found the off timer.

[00:09:27] There's a little timer in the settings. So I turned the two backlights off cause I needed to turn the two back lights off, which is fine. But when I powdered them back up again, they wouldn't register on the controller. The controller would trigger them. But it wouldn't read them.

[00:09:40] So I had no idea. I. I've got literally thousands of pounds worth of kit in the studio and I'm doing what I used to do, which is to walk up to them and turn the dials on the back. Talk about old school. Maybe just, maybe I need to spend the day with the manual because I'm sure none of this is to do with the kit.

[00:10:00] It's all to do with the operator. Again, thank you for putting up with the sound quality on that interview. I've got a load of those coming. It was a lot of fun. To do it and a huge amount of fun, lots of questions, or the same questions to lots of people. And there are some really quite interesting insights in there, but today's podcast.

[00:10:19] I was going to talk about something different, but I had this email. That came in during the week and it just simply says the following.

[00:10:26] Hi, Paul. I have just listened to the latest podcast. Congratulations on becoming an Elinchrom ambassador. I enjoyed hearing the story of you buying your first strobe and how it has led to you becoming a brand ambassador all these years later. I am probably in a very similar situation to where you were in 2003 i.e. Just thinking of buying my first strobe and I wondered which light you would recommend now. I've been looking at the Godox AD200 as I'm on a limited budget, but we'd love to hear your thoughts.

[00:10:57] So there you go. Nice email from Steve and in the process of sitting and tapping a pencil on my teeth as I do. I have actually emailed him back and so this is in some senses a transcript of that email, but I thought it'd be an interesting podcast too. Chew on why you choose the kit. You do. So obviously when I'm going back to someone who asks a question like that, and we get these kinds of questions all the time, what camera, what lighting, what software. In the end. You have to make these decisions and they're all arbitrary, but you live with them for quite a long time.

[00:11:33] So how would I go about today, choosing my first strobe? So I have to caveat all of this conversation, as you now know. With the fact that as a brand ambassador for it puts me in an interesting position. Of course, I want to recommend nothing but 'Chroms. Why would I do anything else? But of course, That doesn't suit everybody.

[00:11:57] The budgets don't suit everybody. And even in my bag, my camera bag right now. I have a Nikon SB800. I have two Godox V1's. And coincidentally, two Godox AD200's. Because they're small, they do their job. The SB800 is then there because occasionally I want to have on-camera flash. Nikon, well, it plays better with Nikon the than it does with Godox.

[00:12:21] So I've got that in there. Um, permanently with it's AA batteries, for those moments when I want to do an on-camera flash very often a direct flash, old school photo journalist style. Whether I'm doing a wedding or without doing something a little bit more commercial either way, but it's a very versatile rig.

[00:12:38] And I, at the moment, I don't have an answer to how I'm going to change that. To step a little bit more into line with the Elinchroms. Now don't get me wrong at all. It was a proper emotional moment when I fired up the 'Chroms. Uh, for the first time in an, in anger, I suppose, as the expression, for two paying clients, as opposed to doing junior workshop. We're in a workshop, you have time to think.

[00:13:01] So I have time to reset. I have time, to adapt when I'm working with a client, of course, it's quick fire. I had a two year old and a four year old in in the afternoon. And I had a dog in the morning, the knee, none of these are patient. You don't have time. So actually working them was app was brilliant, even if I'll be honest, I haven't quite got my arms around it.

[00:13:24] So to answer the question, the AD200 is a really good light. So instead of saying, here's what, here's the right answer. Here's the kit you want? I posed some questions and here's the question list I went back to Steve with for him to answer.

[00:13:41] Firstly, and most importantly, what is your budget? And then add 25%, possibly 50%. cause no matter what you think you needed, you're going to need more, whether it's spare batteries, whether it's modifiers to put on the front, whether it's a bracket, that'll put it onto a normal light stand, whatever it may be. You're going to need to add that on the AD200's very good, they're a little bit fiddly. But they are exceptionally. Good for what they do.

[00:14:04] And even if, and even, sorry, not with, when I'm out there using my Elinchroms, I am sure that the AD200's will never be far away for little bits of fill light or effects lighting, when I need it.

[00:14:16] Do the triggers. This is an important one about studio lighting in particular off-camera flashlight ING. Do the triggers for that system feel right to you? All too often, the bit that is missing from any money fractures lineup is the trigger. They're, they're made, they do their job, but they're not user-friendly.

[00:14:34] And I have to say, even after however many years I was using the Profoto. synchro Air TTL. It was never my favorite trigger. I get frustrated with Godox as well is nine times out of 10 when I'm using a strobe, I'm using it in the dark. So what's the one thing I want to be lit up.

[00:14:51] It's the buttons on the triggers. I. I know what I'm doing is really, I don't get how for a device that by definition, I'm going to use when the light levels are low. It really is difficult to use in low light levels. I just, yeah, just one of those things and it comes back a little bit. To what Lewis was saying about having the designers of these systems a little bit more transparent.

[00:15:14] I'd love to have more designers, more designer input. Sorry, more photographers input into the design processes of some of this kit. Because actually we use it. We know where its weaknesses are. We know what is frustrating when we're down there in the dirt. Trying to get things sorted.

[00:15:30] Next question.

[00:15:31] What adapters will you need to get a modifier onto the light or will you always use a bare head flash? I asked this because if you're using an AD200 nothing fits it until he put a modifier, a bracket on it that will take. Whether it's Elinchrom, whether it's Profoto, whether it's Godox themselves. Any S- type for instance, an S- type modifier on to the front, but you are going to have to buy some additional brackets. To make that possible.

[00:15:59] Are you going to expand the system?

[00:16:01] So Steve's email asked. W I'm buying or stated I'm buying my first strobe. What would you recommend? And part of the puzzle is what are you going to do in the future? Is this just one strobe, in which case an AD200 is perfectly fine. Is it going to be part of a set and will it all be the same style? They're big for speed lights, but they're little for strobes AD200's of, I don't know if you've seen them. They sort of look. Sort of rectangular, like, I dunno. Couple of bars of chocolate. taped together. They're not very big. They're very rectangular and they're very good.

[00:16:37] But will you always stay with this manufacturer? Are you going to buy into their system? Will you have a Godox controller? And then you'll add Godox studio lights Godox led lights Godox, more Speedlights what are you going to do? Because if you're going to stick with a system. Start with the system that ultimately you want to use.

[00:16:57] What modifiers ultimately do you want to use?

[00:17:00] Will it be umbrellas or boxes? Are they readily available and affordable. Of course, anything that clips onto an S type adapter, that's the old Bowens adapter, is really relatively speaking available and it's going to be not too expensive, because the manufacturers like good docs and picks was it picks a pro and a few of the others.

[00:17:20] They're all adult. Adapting and adopting the S type. And it means you get access to really good quality budget kit. To bolt onto the front. Or, you know, like me, are you fascinated with really beautiful light? And it's not that those modifies don't create beautiful light, but for me, just using a kit, I want to feel good about it. So I've stayed. I've had, I've stayed pretty much with Elinchrom, um, throughout, even though. I was using pro photo strobes.

[00:17:47] I was still using my old Elinchrom modifiers because they just lovely. Um, Is it. An additional question who inspires you? Maybe that's an obtuse question. But it's not a bad shout to have a look around. Photographers whose work you really like. And then it doesn't take long to go through their social feeds and figure out what they use.

[00:18:10] Because if there's a look you're trying to create, there's a lighting quality it's going to try and create. I mean, in the end, you'll form your own lighting, your own designs, your own style. And that's absolutely right. But more often than not, when you're starting out you're using ideas from other people, you're looking at social feeds, you're looking at websites, you're looking in magazines as much as magazines. It's still a thing.

[00:18:35] And you, you, the curiosity is peaked when you see a picture, you really like, and you're thinking, okay, how did they do that? It's never a bad idea to have a look at the kit they've used. And for us here in the studio, for instance, I will constantly look at images and try and figure out what lighting they've used.

[00:18:52] But of course then actually our studio isn't that big, so I have to figure out a way round that. The good news is if you can figure out a way around it, you can use pretty much any kit. The bad news is there are some things I can't do. There's some lighting patterns. I simply don't have the space typically overhead to be able to do. But either way go and have a look at the people you really, really admire and are inspired by and have a look at their kit and see if that's something that might feed in to the conversation.

[00:19:21] This is one of those techie dweeby things, but what is the battery life? And are you going to exceed it? And by battery life, I don't mean it, the total lifespan of the battery, I mean, is it going to go flat at the moment you really want to take a photograph and as such. How much are the spare batteries.

[00:19:38] Some of these manufacturers that, you know, in additional batteries, 500, 600, 700 quid. And it's fine if you've got the money. But. You know, maybe that's just too much. Or would you, for instance, if you're only going to work in a studio, will mains power do you? Now here at the studio, I've taken a view to move away from mains, but for no, not because I want to take the strobes out on location necessarily, but because we have children running around, we have dogs running around and having mains cables is not ideal.

[00:20:10] My Profoto B1's We're brilliant for that could keep them out of the way the kids, the tripods are all weighted down. There's no cables. The only downside is if I use the modeling lights, batteries are going to go flat pretty quickly. So have a look at the batteries and what strategy you're going to have for keeping things charged up during a day of shooting.

[00:20:29] And then the final one I think was do you need modeling lights? If you're like me a photographer that uses modeling lights as your guide, how are you going to do that with something like the AD200 and although the manufacturer Godox do claim that it has a modeling light on it, it's really small.

[00:20:45] It's not going to do you an all flood a good it's. Okay. If you're in a really dark space. And you just need to see what you're doing. It does. Okay. But it's not great. In my opinion from that, but if you don't need it, then that's absolutely, brilliant. So it's instead of answering really for Steve.

[00:21:03] I don't know what he was expecting: buy that one. that'll be fine. What could go wrong?

[00:21:07] I've opposed yet more questions. But I think this is how you choose your kit. And this goes across all types of kit. These are the types of questions. You need to ask yourself. And for me, I think the really important ones, the fundamental one. Is what is your budget?

[00:21:23] Because in the end, particularly if like me, you, when you're living from it, You have to show a return on that investment for every bit of kit you buy over its lifespan. What is your budget?

[00:21:36] The next thing you have to ask yourself is going to, is it going to do the job? I need it to do. Because as always, there's a thousand ways of doing everything. And every manufacturer will tell you their way is the right way.

[00:21:50] And every manufacturer is absolutely right. But what do you do? You got to pick one in the end.

[00:21:56] And that's the final question.

[00:22:00] Do you want to pick it up and do you want to use it? And that's the most important question of all when it comes to being creative. Because if you don't utterly love using the kit, it land. In a box and that is a proper waste of money. You have to buy the kit that you love and that makes you want to create images. That, that there's no getting around that because if you don't buy something that makes you smile and makes you want to pick up your camera and create a picture, then you'll never use it.

[00:22:31] And that really is, a waste of money.

[00:22:35] So on that happy note, this is a shorter episode. I'm hoping to go back to my weekly recordings, but we'll see how we go. So far so good. I hope the little interview snippet with Louis at the beginning, was interesting is only short, but I thought he had a really nice way about him and a really intriguing Viewpoint on the industry and it's always interesting to talk to these guys.

[00:22:55] As a thank you for him being recorded. I'm giving warehouse express a free plug. There's no arrangement here at all. I buy stuff from them. Much as I buy it from other suppliers too, but I really, I really rate warehouse expresses customer service. I have had. I'm sure if you troll around, you'll find people with different stories. But the story I have is they've always been exceptional. They've always delivered on time. They've always been good value. They are one of those companies where their customer service is rock solid and their stock levels also a pretty high. So if you want it, you can get it and you're going to get it when they say it will arrive.

[00:23:33] So you can't say much better than that. So on that happy note, thank you for listening. Thank you for getting into the end of this particular episode and as always, please do subscribe to the podcast, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Please also leave us a review. Oh, I'm one of the main platforms.

[00:23:50] We love it when we see ratings and reviews on iTunes, because of course it is the biggest platform for podcasts of them all but wherever it is that you listen to your podcasts, please do leave us a review. Of course, if you ever have any questions, just like Steve did, please drop me a line.

[00:24:06] It's paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. That's paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. Um, I did mention the workshops we're running. We're ramping those up just at the moment, having a blast. It's so much fun. We've had the nicest models and more importantly, the nicest attendees on our workshops, they're very friendly.

[00:24:28] They're very funny. We have a really, just a good time laughing and taking or laughing and creating beautiful images. If you fancy one of our workshops, please head over to Paul Wilkinson photography and look for the coaching section or just Google paul Wilkinson photography workshops and you will land on them. Without a shadow of a doubt and head over to masteringportraitphotography.com, the spiritual home of this podcast. Which has a ton of resources for portrait photographers, whether it's about the creativity. The artistry, the enjoyment or the business of this wonderful art.

[00:25:02] And until next time when I should be presenting yet another snippet from the photography show. , thank you for listening and be kind to yourself. Take care.

I recorded this podcast at 7am while sat in the studio, waiting for a new TV to be delivered.  Luckily it actually arrived when they said it would!  The TV is for our Client Reveal Room as we want our customers to have the best possible experience when they come back to see their pictures.

But exactly how do you figure out where to spend your limited budget?  On things that benefit your client, that's where!

In this episode, I mention a couple of different things.  Firstly, a reminder of the colour correction tool I love: Imagen AI If you use this link: https://www.imagen-ai.com/start?ref=paulwilkinson the lovely guys at Imagen AI will give you 1500 free (yes 1500 FREE) file corrections.  I get some as well, so feel free to use the link, and we BOTH get a freebie!

We have just announced a brand new workshop: Mastering The Essentials Of Studio Lighting.. This workshop is very anyone who is venturing into studio lighting and wants to get to grips with creating stunning images with simple techniques and easily available kit.  We'll go through everything you need to know, from setting up the camera to getting the best out of your space.  Details can be found at https://www.paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk/store/workshops/mastering-essential-studio-lighting-21st-november-2022/ As always with our workshops, the number of attendees is strictly limited to 6 (or half a dozen if you prefer it in words) so everyone gets plenty of time to try things out and ask questions.

At the mentioned workshop, we'll be serving a delicious lunch care of the guys at What's Cooking.  Admittedly this link is a little geo-restrictive (I doubt it's much use to listeners more than a few miles away!), but the lunch was sooooo good at the last workshop that I felt we just had to give a quick link!

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

Had a chance this week to go and enjoy some incredible sketches and watercolours at the Ashmolean in Oxford.  The artists?  The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood - one of my favourite groups of artists. 

Somewhat uncharacteristically, we also developed some Ilford XP2 film (our daughter wants a film camera) and I've been testing a few old boxes we've had laying around for the past 20 years or more. The results, if I was being charitable, weren't a disaster.  But they weren't great either.

And that's in stark contrast to the camera I am using daily: the Nikon Z9.  

This camera is so utterly good that it is literally changing everything I have believed in since I first picked up a DSLR.  Have a listen and see if you agree with me (or not!)

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Also, a quick reminder, if you're listening to the BEFORE 20th September 2022, Sarah and I will be presenting on the Graphistudio stand at the Photography Show at 1pm - grandstanding as usual - and you can also catch us on the BIPP stand, doing business and portfolio reviews.

See you there!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. 

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

Well, this is the last episode of 2021.  Unless I find a moment to drag myself away from the turkey, pigs in blankets, roast potatoes, cheese, Quality Street, sherry, wine, stuffing, more turkey, more cheese and maybe just a tad more sherry.  Oh go on then, if I must, best make it a small one.

In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Grays Of Westminster - a legendary shop of all things Nikon.  I am speaking with Becky and Kon from the shop who not only run rings around me with their knowledge of Nikon gear but are two of the nicest people you can imagine!  It is a lovely interview, irrespective of the camera brand you use. Mostly we chat kit, customer service and the imminent Z9!

In the interview, I ask them both for the book recommendations.

Kon recommended Wonderland, by Annie Leibovitz: 

‘Looking back at my work, I see that fashion has always been there,’ Annie Leibovitz observes in the preface to Wonderland. ‘Fashion plays a part in the scheme of everything, but photography always comes first for me. The photograph is the most important part.  And photography is so big that it can encompass journalism, portraiture, reportage, family photographs, fashion ... My work for Vogue fueled the fire for a kind of photography that I might not otherwise have explored.’ 

Becky recommended The Real Deal, by Jo McNally

'Joe writes about everything from the crucial ability to know how to use (and make!) window light to the importance of creating long-term relationships built on trust; from lessons learned after a day in the field to the need to follow your imagination wherever it takes you; from the random and lucky moments that propel one s career to the wonders and pitfalls of today s camera technology. For every mention of f-stops and shutter speeds, there is equal discussion about the importance of access, the occasional moment of hubris, and the idea of becoming iconic. Before Joe was a celebrated and award-winning photographer, before he was a well-respected educator and author of multiple bestselling books, he was just Joe, hustling every day, from one assignment to the next, piecing together a portfolio, a skill set, a reputation, a career. He imagined a life and then took pictures of it. Here are a few frames.'

I'll be adding them to the library!

If you'd like to see some of their videos, they can be found on YouTube (or just search for 'Grays Of Westminster')

Have a wonderful Christmas, one and all and here's to a happy New Year!

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, where there are articles and videos about this beautiful industry. 

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

If you'd like to use one of the other players out there, why not try Vurbl?  

So it's Sunday as I both record and write this and I'm having a frankly chilled day.  Not that this is in any way your worry, but I thought I'd tell you.

This episode is a rebuttal of my own grumpy podcast (EP113) when I seem to have spent most of it muttering about my Z7ii and how it isn't quite there yet.  Well, this one is the other extreme - here are the reasons I think mirrorless and, by extension, the Nikon Z9 is about to come of age.  If the spec of the Z9 is correct (I don't have my hands on one yet - it's ordered and paid for but could be a while) then this camera won't just be the pinnacle of mirrorless as we know it, it will be the start of a whole new generation of cameras and capability.  Seriously.  

I also give a shameless (and, just to be clear, unpaid) plug for the wonderful institution that is Grays Of Westminster - simply the best Nikon shop in the world.  I should add, I don't know if there are other dedicated Nikon shops in the world.  I don't care if there are: Grays would still come out on top. It is truly like Ollivander's Wand Shop in Harry Potter. But with lenses not wands. And customer service that is every bit as personal.

If you're curious they can be found at https://www.graysofwestminster.co.uk/ and they also have a fabulous range of 2nd hand kit in their online store. 

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, where there are articles and videos about this beautiful industry. 

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

If you'd like to use one of the other players out there, why not try Vurbl?  

Switching to a mirrorless system was always going to happen - SLRs (and their requisite mirrors) are slowly heading the same way as film, dark rooms, Black Forest gateaux, prawn cocktail and sandals with socks. Though I happen to love Black Forest gateaux. And film.  And the darkroom.  Prawn cocktails and sandals with socks, well they can stay in the history books!

Anyway, James Keen DM'd me on Instagram and asked for an update on my move to mirrorless and so, while clattering my way home in the Land Rover from a perfect Oxfordshire wedding, here are my thoughts.  With a few rattly sound effects in the background just for authenticity.

Enjoy!

Cheers
P.

If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, where there are articles and videos about this beautiful industry. 

PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!

If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk. 

If you'd like to use one of the other players out there, why not try Vurbl?  

I am frequently asked to advise on what would I buy if I started from scratch so, as I drink a last coffee (decaf of course!) before heading out to shoot a glorious, sunny wedding, I ponder on those initial purchases: what and why.  And it includes good shoes. Who knew?