Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I found it interesting that the Einstein can keep up w/ a P&S's preflash at lower power levels too...the AB/WL and other standard strobes probably wouldn't since they dump their entire charge....

A little hard to answer. If you fire continuously like this you are charging constantly and drawing about 16A continuously from the powerline. This will really heat up the Einstein and stress it. Hopefully the built in thermal protection will kick on and shut the Einstein down.

PW MultiMax can do a preset number of strobed pops at a preset rate.

We haven't done any destruction testing in the sort of use, but I would suggest thinks would get pretty hot after a minute or two at 10-12FPS.

If you fry it, we'll fix it . . . but if dozens of customers start frying them tis way we would have to rethink that ;)

Thanks for the info. I can't imagine more than 10-20 seconds at the most with 5 seconds more likely.

At our studio we just picked up the PW MC2 for our two Einsteins (slowly replacing our 7 left over AB800s... although we will likely keep 3-4 of them) and now reading some of this I'll be picking up our 3rd Einstein with MC2. Using the flex you can do something called speedcycler which allows you to put each Einstein on the same channel but different zone (A,B or C) and then fire those zones in sequence while holding down the shutter.

So reading this with the settings turned down I can fire my mark III at 10 fps without overly stressing the Einstein (since their will be 3 running in sequence over and over) and because each one will be triggered every third shot that would give just a little more time for recycle so I can cheat the power back up a bit. This is very cool and using my AC3 I can also change exposure on the fly.

My next test after I get this working though will be a bulb exposure on the camera and seeing if holding down the test button on the flex will trigger the speedcycler option. If that works then I can do a multi-exposure on a single shot in a rigged stroboscopic fashion.

The more I use my Einsteins the more I love them and it will take someone prying them from my cold dead hands to get them away from me... especially now with my Power MC2's in the mix.

Are you sure the camera will not keep the circuit closed for you? Either way, I do not know that would work as the camera gives the Tx a seperate trigger signal for each frame, which then cycles through the groups. Is there a function that allows the Tx to fire at a set interval when the circuit is kept closed, and if so, is that interval adjustable? If not, a Multi Max may do this for you using its intervalometer mode. I am not overly familiar with every feature of every PW product, so take this as thinking out loud.

Thanks for the info... I actually don't know yet if it will work. The speedcycler is a new beta feature in the flexes and it's a carry over of the intervalometer mode from the Multimax (PW keeps bridging the gap between the flex and the Multimax). The only difference is that while getting a trigger it goes through zone A,B,C in order and then repeats. It was made to fire flashes in order to get shots faster then most single lights can recycle at. It was also made to fire remote cameras in sequence (instead of all at the same time so you can get a set of running up to the basket, etc). The AC3 on top of the flex allows you to turn off zones you don't want to fire and very exposure but what I don't know is if just holding the test button on a hand held flex will trigger speedcycler or if it requires a hot shoe command. I'll be testing soon and asking PW. If it doesn't work that way then I'll have a feature request for them... LOL.