Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

There's a project I wanted to do that's sort of a stop motion video using people. I know you're able to shoot multiple frames at say 5FPS but I'm needing to shoot 5FPS for an extended period of time say 2-3 minutes straight with breaks in between. Is this possible with the AB series at a low power?

There are a lot of variables that would dictate this answer. The power setting of the flash, the number of units used, how long your breaks are, and the amperage rating of the AC circuit.

With one or two lights at a lowish power, and sufficient breaks, you should be able to do 5fps for a longer-than-usual time. Unfortunately, you would need to test this under your specific conditions for a particular endurance, as it would be next to impossible to calculate.

Makes sense. I'm thinking of using two AB400's at a really low power and the breaks in between shooting would probably be 15-20 minutes. I've even thought of using 4 lights and rotating them. I'll try it out with two and see how it goes. The main question is if something like this is recommended against. I guess the worst that can happen is I need to buy new bulbs! :D

I have tried shooting at 5fps with B400 units and the power output is very unstable. If you have the ability to use pw multimax or any other transmitter that could transmit continuously to different channels (not sure how to explain that, but i.e. you put 4 B400 units, and set each of them at different channels (from 1 to 4). Set the transmitter on your camera to fire each channel once at 4fps, so you would have each flash firing only at 1fps). That way, you could get a conistant power output for continuous shooting.