Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

very nice, thank you for sharing

unfortunately, the alien bees are a little big to be carrying around and chasing people so there are a lot of cases were a small AA battery powered speedlight will work and studio lights won't

personally i think there is plenty of room in the world of flash for both type of systems

ideally, if one were to invest in a radio trigger system it would work well with both type of flashes

since there are no AB AA powered small speedlights (yet), that means mixing and matching flashes

also, it is exactly because the cybersyncs are so fast that the high speed sync hack will be worse, most of the full power flash will go off before the first curtain even gets open

in what is truly ironic, some of the higher delay RF triggers will work better in this mode

and as much as I like my Nikon D40, cameras predominantly have mechanical shutters

Paul C Buff products seem to me to be a great value and performer and the owner/developer will listen to you on his own forum? that is pretty special too

so i guess i am over here lobbying for the small speedlight and the mechanical shutter crew - there are some things that could be done within the cybersync system to squeeze out some more performance from existing products

also, i would like to plant the seed in Laup's subconscious for a purpose built off camera AA powered speed light for the strobist crew

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=140

Regards and thanks for listening,

David

I could do an elaborate portable flash with really effective HSS, but the amount of engineering and trying to meet the criteria of ever evolving cameras would out weigh the engineering expense VS the market place and I would lose money, and be diverted from the type of products I do best.

HSS really requires the camera and the flash to be integrated by design . . . hey Canon/Nikon I have a red phone like Glenn Beck . . . call me!

What really ought to happen is Canon or Nikon ought to address this with their budget and engineering staff and make a modern CMOS camera act like a D40 . . . they could do it a lot easier than I could kludge a light that works around their limitations and ever changing technology and lack of real-use vision.

i think the elaborate (read expensive) portable flash market is already covered

what the market really needs is a no frills, off camera purpose built, rugged, AA powered, small flash

the alien bee equivalent of a SB900 or 580EX in power and size and powered by AA batteries

I could not agree with purdyd more...I have 4 AB flash units plus a ring flash and a vagabond II, but I would love an AB version of the SB900!

Until Luap gets around to designing a QFlash sized Einstein. (I hope, I hope :) )
That's the alternative. There are often used older generation Qflash available. The Turbo Battery is also available used. And the SLA battery is easily replaced.

There is also a thread on the FM forum regarding building a small battery pack with inverter that will drive an AB800 for a couple hundred pops at full power. It weights less and is smaller than the Quantum Turbo Battery. (Parts came to about $150 and it took about 5 minutes to assemble. (Fits into a 17-40 lens bag.) AB800 or Einstein is bigger than QFlash but not by much.

Once I get the first Einstein to test with the battery pack and play around with a bit there may be a couple of QFlash setups available. :)

Shouldn't that be and Orange phone for you, Paul? To match the Limited Edition AB's or course. LOL.

This is the type of thing that would be on MY wish list from the camera makers. Mr. Wiesniewski pointed out the requirements of "snap shutter" sensors with some greater noise, etc. but it would be worth it to me to have a lower ISO sensor (full frame 35mm for shallower DOF) to do sunlight/flash photographs at f/2 to f/11, thereby avoiding the dreaded diffraction issues.

If the camera makers had pursued this route instead of the terminally stupid "megapixel race," we could just plug in your lights, triggers, and Vagabonds and shoot with full reciprocity control at any shutter/aperture combination, once we got our f/16, f/22, f/32, or f/45 output to render a dramatic sky.

Maybe it's time to take my original Foveon prism camera and do just that with your lights (I still have one left, but the display needs some work). It's 12x12mm sensors are 1/6th the size of full frame 35mm sensors, but with a base ISO 32 sensitivity, one can choose a fairly large aperture to start with and it will synch. with any flash at any shutter speed, with some caveats. According to friend who is the official Pittsburgh Penguins photographer, 1/1,000 to 1/2,000th of a second is all you need to freeze most sports actions, except, perhaps, for the puck itself.

Somtimes a long wire solves other problems as well but it's nice to have a full toolbox to solve any lighting problems for any situation or market application.

Actually, I do have an orange phone exactly like Beck's red one. Found it in Santa Fe and had to have it. Same color as orange bees, replete with rotary dial . . . plus it works better than the modern phones.

Very cool. I think they really cheapened the transducers in the modern ones. Much like most of the work on acoustic horns and drivers was done before WW II.

Ya can't have good digital without good analog to start, right?

Absolutely. If you care about audio ya gotta' hate modern squawk phones 8-)

I would think the pre-flash signal could also be used as a start-point for a flash trigger to sync a bit ahead of the normal sync. It would not be exactly at the pre-flash sync point, but calculated from the timing of the pre-flash sync.



This doesn't surprise me. I would expect that Paul C. Buff, Inc., and all other studio electronic flash manufacturers are attempting to shorten their T.1 durations as much as possible (i.e., increase their efficiency), which will reduce the feasibility of flash-delay tricks that depend on long T.1 times.