Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I use my 5 Einsteins for high speed flash bird photography. I use the undocumented feature to shorten the pulse duration down to about 9 stops below full power. Works great.
The issue is fan noise, which at close range is very disconcerting for the birds, and makes them unwilling to approach the set.
The maximum duty cycle of the flashes might be one flash every few minutes, so the fan is really only necessary to cool the Mosfets in the switcher, would be my guess.

Would it be possible to control the fan operation via firmware?

Really appreciate any insight,
Thanks,
Roy.

No, there is not a way to control fan speed.

Care to share the "undocumented feature" you're referring to?

Dave F.

"Care to share the "undocumented feature" you're referring to?

Dave F."

It was given to me by one of the PCB tech guys in private email correspondence, so I feel a little uneasy sharing it. Let's just say it is possible to play with the parameters on the Diagnostics screen. That, and you have to keep the Diagnostics screen visible, else the parameter changes are lost.

If this doesn't make sense, best not to play. If it does, you will find it very useful for very high speed applications. But you will need to know a little about flash circuit design to understand the parameters. I used to run a high speed flash company - Fotronix Inc.

Roy.

Does this mess up color constant temps?
I.e., you're running in speed mode instead of color constant mode?

Most certainly it does, however the ease of the quick application of color correction in post far outweighs the challenges of taking images with very short duration flash. We are talking low tens of microseconds.

R.