Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I photograph large youth leagues, Teams and Individuals. I have used Norman 400B's to light my teams in the past, buy am exploring the possibilities of using my White Lightning X1600's. I would have 4 1600's connected to 4 different Vagabonds. Each would only be powering 200-250 half to full power shots, but these large jobs run 8-9 hours. It would be impractical to power off the Vagabonds between teams. I know the Vagabonds have plenty of power for the number of shots, but I read in the specs that they will run down after 10-20 hours. My question is whether or not they can last 8-9 hours and power the 1600's for 250 shots, and last the entire job.

Thanks,
Randy Brister

If you have a good and fully charged battery, and the inverter is in "slow" mode, you should be fine. If you find you only need 1/4 power, it would be more efficient to use the 1/4 power switch instead of the slider.

However, you can also buy beefier batteries (like at Batteries Plus or the like) and run the light off those for longer run times. it may not be as convenient to transport, but would give a longer run time.

I would suggest turning the Vagabonds off if you have long times between sessions . . . the inverter does draw some power when on and idle. A computer UPS is the same . . . even with no load it will run its battery down in a matter of hours from its internal power consumption.