Interview with Elinchrom’s President – New Skyport+ trigger and Godox battery pack

Last week Elinchrom made two announcements: one was about a new EL Skyport+ trigger and one about starting to sell the Godox battery pack inverter.

We find both announcements interesting. We caught up with Christopher Whittle, Elinchrom’s president at the Photography show and asked about those. See the interview above, and some of my thoughts after the jump.

Godox battery pack

For me the more interesting bit was about Elinchrom collaborating with Godox for the battery pack. I mean Elinchrom’s Skyport trigger system is in direct competition with Godox X transmitters. (and an even deeper competition between Godox and the Elinchrom-Phottix-Sekonic alliance). Whittle had a very intersting comment on that, free quoted as: “we can not make the best in the market in a competitive price, so we are offering Godox”.

I have two thoughts on this:

1. KUDOS to Eli, admitting one’s shortcoming and turning to competition to help your customers is not a trivial move and I would definitely take this as a que that Eli cares about their customers.
2. A merger / purchase / Godox joining the alliance in the future? Who know, but relations are definitely warming up.

EL Skyport+ Transmitter

The other news are the new EL Skyport+ Transmitter. It is one of the first fruits of the tech alliance between Phottix and Eli, so I guess it has some Odin tech inside. It would be intersting to follow up and see if the Odin system eventually merges with the Skyport system converge. You can read all the nity-gritty details on the product page, but the gist of it is quite awesome: