Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Just received 4 einsteins and a cyber commander. Love them and having a great time using them except for one little frustration:

In using multiple einsteins, Im having a hard time isolating one light at a time in my work process. When I turn one of the lights off, the CC keeps turning it back on again when I don't want it to. Gone over the manuals in attempts to find easy ways to turn off specific lights, but seems only way to do this is to go into the CC menu to turn it to standby mode OR just turn it off at the light itself - and even then when adjusting power to other lights, the 'off' lights keep kicking back on again when i dont want them to. Eventually I just have to unplug the light altogether to keep it off until I want it on again. REALLY wish there was a simple way in the FLASH screen on the CC to easily disable a light at a time. Am I missing something simple here?

Thanx for such great products and support - It is HUGEly appreciated. 8)

- todd

You can set up groups in the Cyber Commander which will allow you to quickly change which lights fire and which do not, once the groups are set up. Light set up to be in a group will fire, those not sin the selected group will not.

This is discussed in more detail on pg 48 of the new (Sept 2012) Cyber Commander manual.

http://www.paulcbuff.com/manuals/cc.pdf

Yes groups are helpful and I understand how they work, but in a studio with so many different light set-ups and things moving fast, I just need a quick way to easily enable/disable single lights without worrying about the right lights being in the right positions or right groups in order for the groups sequence to work the way I have them set up - it's just far too many steps for what should be a very simple thing to do with a couple clicks on the remote for the selected light. I never know exactly which light or lights I want to isolate so using groups would need to assume these things.

The way I would have it work is that the joystick to lower the power for the selected light simply goes to "off" when push it down if the light is at its lowest power. Something simple like this.

I hope that makes sense and I hope this will be considered in future CC updates.

Thank you! :D

Simplest way I've found (I'm assuming you just go over and hit the power button on the back like I tried to do a while back), is to unplug the power cord on the back. :)

What's happening w/ the CC (I think) is that it seems to be sending update commands to all the lights to change their settings every time you change the setting of one light. That powers it back on if you hit the power button on the back. You could argue it should have only fiddled w/ one light, but I can see someone plugging in a new light and then having the setup no longer match what's on the CC's display, so that's probably why they decided to send updates to all lights.

In audio mixing terms, which Paul is certainly familiar with, we are looking for a Solo function.
That is, select a light to isolate and trigger with a camera shutter release so we can look at its effect in isolation, on an image. Just like the CC can do when Flash Metering, when triggering a reading of just one channel, rather than a Group or All.
It is a visual workflow, instead of, or to compliment, a metering workflow.

It should be an additive solo function (not sure that is the right term.) That is, select another light to solo, without un-soloing the first, and it also triggers with a shutter release. So technically, neither is solo'ing at that point, but it's a useful workflow to see the effect of 2+ lights.

Instead of Solo, it could just be a quick Standby (i.e. Mute) ability. Just tackles the task from the opposite end.
Note that enabling such a Standby function by powering down a light, then to Standby, is not desired. We want to maintain the levels we are setting along the way, not have to remember them then creep the power back up to a that setting, which we may not remember.
:geek:

VRVINCE,

You're spot on with the solo/mute thing. I considered this when designing CC, but there was just no room on the crowded interface to put 32 buttons for this.

I'm always trying to devise a simpler CC that can accomplish this, but it will take either a much larger touch screen display or a whole bunch of buttons.

Ergonomics is everything in miniaturizing a control system like this.

An audio console with sixteen channels and all these features is at least 24" wide.

Enabling solo/mute with gestures would be ideal, but I suspect all the gestures on the current controls are taken. A double-click, or double-bend would be a thought, but you would have to delay the reaction to a single-click, to listen for the double. That reduces the responsiveness to single clicks.

The problem with adding this valuable function to CC is that it's already too complex for most shooters.

I really think I should be working on a much larger, yet simplified version to allow quick and intuitive access to the important functions. But there goes the hotshoe mount capability.

I don't know how large you're thinking, but the ability to mount on a hotshot may not be a deal breaker. I (and it seems like many others) use a CST to avoid having to slide the CC on and off to make adjustments. Having the CC in hand or on a lanyard would be just fine with me :)

On a touchscreen, features can be spread over more pages, as swiping gestures to flip through pages feels quicker, perceptually, than joysticking through them. The "fewer clicks, less screens" can be be a false usability mantra.

Fewer simple features, the main ones, with nice big touchscreen buttons, can be put on a few pages, and various gestures (tap, double-tap, tap-hold, swipes) provide plenty of interaction. Advanced features can be put on sub-pages.
The overall 16 channel status view, and then interacting with a channel, is an interesting challenge though.
Also, still provide hard buttons; not everything works on touch screen. Think car/plane dashboards, mixing consoles, dedicated editing control surfaces, etc.