Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

We users are never satisfied. :-) Here I am, never even seen an Einstein, and aware of its backlog, asking if there might be a higher-powered version in the plans.

Truth be told, 640WS is good enough for the vast majority of my uses in terns of light output. On the other hand, if the 640WS Einstein can recycle to full power in 1.7 seconds, a 1300WS or higher powered version could deliver sub-second cycle times for that same 640WS output.

While the extra power headroom of such a 1300WS Einstein would in itself be quite desirable, but the sub-second recycle at 640WS it could bring with it, would be a HUGE deal for me, worth to pay 50% more for the unit.

-- AK

My understanding is that the higher power the strobe, the longer the recycle times will be. In other words, the 1300WS would have a longer recycle time than the 640WS would. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree with Alex.K.NY. I would like to get 1200 or 1300 watt lights and use them roughly at 1/2 power to shoot continiously without loosing power. Rick - me and Alex are talking sub second recycling at less power than light can offer at full power. In 640 Watt light, to get continious uniformly lit 3-4 shots per second, I will have to use it around 320 watts, roughly half power or may be less. Most of the times 250 or 300 watts is not enough at lower ISO.

Our monolights are optimized to allow using 3-4 lights on standard household outlets. In order to shorten recycle time per wattsecond would require dedicated outlets and would increase the size, cost and cooling requirements, making it a specialty product with few buyers.

Increasing to 1300WS would double the cycle time unless these measures were taken, and at half power would result in the same cycle time as 640WS at full power.

Your Majesty:

I feel you might not consider your Einstein unit with the same high regard as we consider it. This is no Alien Bee - while excellent, many of its accolades have been of the sort "surprisingly good and solid given the price".

In my opinion Einstein is clearly an entirely different caliber product. Its class-leading capability and sophistication appeals to quite high end users, and it raises the expectation of the level of functionality a studio strobe can deliver. That it is solid and that it costs real money is a given.

To achieve natural results in portraiture and related applications, 80% of the time I prefer to shoot with one active light source (our planet as you know is in a solar system with only one star), and use a variety of reflectors for fill. Yet in my studio I have two 120V circuits on separate 20A breakers, and one 220V circuit on 20A breakers.

With that in mind I have to say that your design constraint of being able to run 3-4 strobes per standard (120V/15A) household circuit appears far too conservative for this user that is interested in Einstein. Perhaps you can run a survey on this forum about potential Einstein clients' AC power environments and how fragmented they want that power to be per light. There is absolutely the need for the present 640WS Einstein, but I wager there are MANY users who might prefer to run just one or a pair of 1300WS Einsteins per household circuit (or one 1300WS and 1-2 640WS ones) rather than 3-4 640WS Einsteins.

I worry about the size only marginally. Cost wise, I expect a 1300WS unit would cost less than a pair of 640WS units delivering comparable output, so we're talking savings. Fan noise is a concern - this is where airflow design and sourcing top-notch fans like Noctua NF-P12 could pay off. Sub-second cycle time at half-power 640WS - PRICELESS!

What would it take for you to please consider making a 1300WS Einstein, that could cycle in under a second at half power?

Cordially

Alex

As a sports shooter I need the ability to plug in multiple units to one outlet. Outlets aren't real plentiful where we need to mount. :)

See, I want 1 (one, singular) of my Einsteins to be around a stop above the others. I don't care about the recycle speed, since a decent proportion of the time I'd be shooting 4x5 film. One more stop of light would be great though.

A 1280ws sumo version would make me very, very happy. I'd only want one, and weight/cost/recycletime wouldn't really be concerns. Just as long as it can run off of a VagabondII, it would be my ideal light.

Maybe add a slow/fast switch like you see w/ some pack power supplies?
Won't help the size/cost/cooling, but would solve the power issue...

What is really being said here is that a few would like me to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars developing a specialty product that would bring me a couple of hundred thousand dollars in sales. Sorry - I design for the masses.

This thread is a very limited statistical sample but out of 5 users 3 seem to be in favor of the higher power option and the 4th one is ambivalent. The 5th one would be perfectly served by the 640WS unit.

On the one hand I appreciate that you ought to focus on pushing the 640WS unit at hand out the door (that took so much time sweat and $ to get here) rather than distract buyers with some pie in the sky 1300WS notion. On the other hand from what I am hearing there are more takers for the existing Einstein as it is than there is near-term production capacity, so there's no harm in investigating / discussing it in a balanced manner.

Longer term, buyers like me would actually be MORE comfortable getting into the system (and with the new highly integrated and functional digital triggers it IS a system) if they knew it had a headroom / option of higher output and / or faster cycle at that same level of technology, even if what they were getting today is that same 640WS unit.

Perhaps a wider survey is warranted. But you hold all the cards here.