For most of my past studio work I have relied on the lighting provided by the studio that I rent. This has worked out reasonably well: I get to use a variety of different lights, I don’t need to carry lights with me and the cost of purchase, maintenance etc is all covered by the owner of the studio.

What’s not to like?

Answer: Nothing until the studio closes and you have to go in search of another space and hope their lighting is what you are used to and does what you want/need! As this happened to me last month, with the studio I have used for the past five years or so closing it’s doors, I decided that it was time to no longer rely on others to provide my lighting needs but instead to invest (or actually further invest as I already owned some lighting) in my own set of studio lights.

Having looked fairly carefully at what’s out there and weighing up various factors such as power, weight and features I eventually opted for Elinchrom RX2 and RX 4 lights and modifiers. I will discuss more details on the kit in a subsequent post. For now here are some images from my first serious shoot with this lighting.

I have discussed a couple of setups (here and here) that I tried on my first outing with these lights so here some of my favourite images from the shoot using those, and other lighting set ups. Here’s the first set with the model Rebecca Louis.

And here’s the second set of the model Devonia.

All images taken at SS Creative Photography studio using an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk I with Olympus M.ZUIKO and  Panasonic lenses. Models were Rebecca Louise and Devonia and the makeup artist was Megan Hewitt.

e-m1 elinchrom lastolite learning lighting manfrotto olympus om-d panasonic sscreativephotography