Dedolight is a name that has been known in the film and TV industry for some time now but lesser known in the stills photography world. I certainly hadn’t really heard of them or paid any attention until a couple of months ago when I first saw the Dedolights in action on the Luxillag stand at a trade show here in Belgium.
When I’ve used constant lighting for photography lately I’ve only used daylight HMI lighting for flood lighting and that’s it. Usually very heavy uncontrollable light sources with huge power consumptions and on/off switches, no dimmer. It didn’t really cross my mind that there would be a viable ‘hot’ light system that would suit me.
The Dedolight DLH4 is the light system I tried out last week. A super compact 24v light system fully dim-able via the transformer. The dimmer is just the tip of the iceberg of the versatility the Dedolight system . There are multitude of accessories to help modify the light. Iris controls, lenses to focus the light, projectors, barn doors, shutter blades, gobos, etc, etc. The list goes on. The versatility opens up doors for photographers that have been used to using flash or softening everything with huge softboxes or diffusers. A controlled bundle of constant light can provide effects that are very hard to create with the lights I’d usually use.
Another advantage of working with constant light is that you see what you are going to get. Light setup is fast and with a camera setup on live view, you’re pretty much shooting exactly what you see.
Below are a few experiment images that I created with the Dedolights. Under those images are a couple of shots for a recent assignment.
I’ll have more images and a more in depth review and explanation of the Dedolight system very soon! Stay tuned for more info on the Dedolight system. Some of my colleagues have expressed interest so I’ll have more demo material very soon so people can have some real hands on testing themselves.
As for the Dedolight DLh4 itself. Here’s a 360 rotatable photo of the basic light unit.
This is shot with the optional shutter blade system added to the DLH4 unit. The line of light can be precisely controlled, literally by the millimetre. The light can be focused to have sharp edges or blurred to have a softer feel.
Below is with the shutter blades opened wider and blurred to create a softer effect.
Again, a very tight line of light used to just define the profile. One of the strong points of the Dedolight system is the light bundle has no spill. 
This is with the iris control ring fitted to the DLH4. A precise aperture can be set and again, focused to a tight sharp edge or blurred to a soft edge.
One of the shots from a recent assignment, Shot with strong backlight I needed some light in the foreground to illuminate the label and the fruit. The shutter blades were fitted to one lamp to light the bottle, the other lamp had the iris control ring fitted to fill in the fruit.
In this shot I wanted to accentuate the bottles but keep the warm feel of the distillery scene. Ambient light in the room was daylight. I exposed darker than I needed and then used the Dedolights to point out the details.
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