Taking the plunge

williaty wrote in post #18525083
The massive disadvantage to all the battery powered lights are the pathetic modeling lamps.

I'd say the modelling lights on my ELB 1200's is all but pathetic compared to other battery powered units, and even to many AC powered units.

Great to know! I try to refrain from speaking on things for which I have no personal experience and I have only recently gotten the eVOLV. Will be putting it and my other FP lights through a comprehensive color yet, among other things, in the coming months and publish my findings at the ALC. In the meantime I just assumed the color accurate stuff is really the domain of higher end Brons and I'm told Einsteins at the more affordable end. Good to learn my understanding needs favorable updating

MayaTlab wrote in post #18525335
Today I think that it's actually more likely to be reversed. A lot of studio strobes still use traditional voltage controlled capacitors to reduce output, and these will lower temperature by around 75-100k per stop. The Profoto D1 is like that for example.

A lot of battery operated strobes now use IGBT circuits or other tricks and if not all of them are constant in terms of colour, at least they have the potential to be. A Godox AD200 with the fresnel head is better in terms of colour consistency throughout the power range than Elinchrom's RX line for example.

Douglas Conway wrote in post #18524540
So I'm ready to take the plunge into some better lighting with a Godox 600BM with TTL and trigger. I was going to add another AC powered head unit and my original thought was just a cheap chinese unit for in studio use but now considering getting another Godox 600 unit.
Other then portability is there any advantage with going with a second Godox head.

Did you mean the AD600B ? this is the one with TTL the AD600BM is the manual. Currently have 2x AD200 evolve which has the TTL too, but I find myself shooting in manual in most times. So I will have this soon as well, have fun and share with us your experience with it.

MayaTlab wrote in post #18525335
Today I think that it's actually more likely to be reversed. A lot of studio strobes still use traditional voltage controlled capacitors to reduce output, and these will lower temperature by around 75-100k per stop. The Profoto D1 is like that for example.

A lot of battery operated strobes now use IGBT circuits or other tricks and if not all of them are constant in terms of colour, at least they have the potential to be. A Godox AD200 with the fresnel head is better in terms of colour consistency throughout the power range than Elinchrom's RX line for example.

I assume you are referring to the older RX units, if so which model ?. You might want to do a comparison of new battery units and new Compact units, which is probably a more accurate comparison. Also taking into account a low powered unit naturally has a much shorter power range compared to many compacts.

But you peaked my interest, what were your testing method and which colour meter did you use ?

These are all tools to get the job done. There is no one way nor best solution. There’s competition that improves our lot in life.

The more intense the competition and the more companies listen the better off we all are as fotogs.

Just be wary of stuff that meets the hardware junkies “cool” factor. “Cool” don’t deliver images.

Skill does. There’s been great work done way before the age of Photography.

...a ways back, I’ll bet guys sat around cave drawings discussing the merits of mud, color dies and charcoal.

fotopaul wrote in post #18525439
I'd say the modelling lights on my ELB 1200's is all but pathetic compared to other battery powered units, and even to many AC powered units.

I’ve got a couple ELB1200’s on my list. I won’t trade in my RX AS Speed Rangers though.

I purchased one of each.

jlafferty wrote in post #18525475
Great to know!

Just note that I just know about one AD200 with fresnel head. Use of the other head, or maybe another unit, may give different results.

fotopaul wrote in post #18525499
I assume you are referring to the older RX units, if so which model ?. You might want to do a comparison of new battery units and new Compact units, which is probably a more accurate comparison. Also taking into account a low powered unit naturally has a much shorter power range compared to many compacts.

But you peaked my interest, what were your testing method and which colour meter did you use ?

RX One, 2, or 4, latest models, of which I still own one RX One. All traditional / old school, simple voltage controlled strobes (Profoto D1 or Compact, older Bowens units for example), behave in a similar fashion anyway. Voltage controlled packs use more complex methods, and I've read that the ELC mixes several capacitors in various ways to get good colour consistency over the power range. Not that I'll know about them as I'm not interested. IGBT strobes are a wild card and can be anything from crap to excellent depending on implementation.

Completely dark room, grey target in front of a black cloth in the middle of the room, strobe around 1m from target, used with a typical umbrella reflector, no modelling light (BTW even if it's proportional it can produce undesired variations, as tungsten bulbs lower temperature when they're dimmed), a dozen or so shots at each power level, with the camera aimed at the grey target, itself in the very centre of the shot to avoid vignetting issues when adjusting aperture, put into Lightroom and Capture One, five or so picker measurements in the same place, all averaged to give a final result. I purposefully don't use colour meters to do that because only the latest ones (C700, which I don't own) have lower tolerances than a raw file put through LR or C1 (the older ones are too unreliable shot to shot), and most of them don't give a result on the magenta / green tint axis.

I don't compare nor measure absolute WB between strobes as this methodology can't work for that. But it's reasonably accurate for colour variation across the power range (and repeatable even when the setup changes a bit). As a tool to evaluate shot to shot consistency, it's no good when it's below 50k, but at this point I don't really care .

Thanx, i thought you were referring to the older RX units. The D-lites even though named RX aren't exactly new either but comparable in power at least.

I Prefer testing with the C-700-U and C-7000 both which are very competent meters, you should try it.

Just the other day i tested the fabric of chinese brand softbox, which is treated with bleach.. like MANY of the Chinese softboxes are. (UV lamp will show it) compared it to a Elinchrom baffle (which is neutral and not treated with bleach) over 900k difference.

Sure we shot the GMB charts and grey cards in raw to see how visible it was for the naked eye, on skin tones the difference was quite evident to say the least.

Just measuring for the sake of it may not be interesting but correlating measurements with a visible difference is handy at times.

I have no doubt that the C700 is a better tool - I'm sometimes asked to use it when assisting and it's a beast !

Despite now shooting Profoto I've kept a D-lite () RX One as it's just brillant for the price, it matches pretty well my current strobes at full power, and the optical triggering has been super reliable, even when I use gels on the main lights. It's a great low cost extra source when needed.

MayaTlab wrote in post #18525607
RX One, 2, or 4, latest models, of which I still own one RX One.

Easier to call them D-lites as that's the range, there's actually a revision with RX in several of Elinchrom's product lines (Style RX, Quadra RX etc).

I've done zero testing so I'll take your word on the colour consistency but there's probably not much value in them improving it though as it's their budget/beginner line. They're also long enough in the tooth they could do with a refresh but I'd be willing to bet any improvements they see as a tax on the rest of their range.

For the price I can't criticise the D-lite range's colour consistency. Shot to shot seems fine, just like any Elinchrom unit I've ever used. And across the power range ? A Profoto D1 can't do any better. I really like them, and they're part of a coherent system (all of Elinchrom's lights have flash tubes with the same diameter and at roughly the same place), which is not a given these day.

I was just suggesting that newer battery operated strobes, such as the AD200 among others, tend to use more "modern" electronics inside than most similarly priced AC powered strobes, sometimes to no benefit whatsoever to colour consistency or even worse, but sometimes with better results over a similar power range. The AD200 with fresnel head that I tried isn't amazing, but it's on the better side of things .