Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hey Paul,

Saw this tidbit already? Fresh off Photokina (from a a link off Galbraith's latest posting..)

Interesting how it's got an internal Lithium Magnesium bat & combi Xe/LED flash modes & LED array for modelling ..
http://www.priolite.com/en/products/details/items/priolite-mb500.html

No worries tho, Tennessee is much closer to me. Both at heart & via UPS. ;)

This is interesting... it would be sweet if they fit Einstein?

"The standard equipment includes a glass dome in various coatings. It provides an excellent protection and enables modification of the color temperature."

The big question is price? I commented first when this showed up on FM that it looked like a good and needed light.

Looks like €760 sans VAT (roughly $1024 USD) for the battery-powered variant , and €95 ($128 USD) for the wireless trigger thingie.

Direct from Rob's site: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-10055-10942

I wouldn't exactly call them direct competitors pricewise, but there are some nice features there.

For me personally I'm not sure I'm sold on the idea of having the battery inside the light. I'm just thinking that it makes it more expensive to add redundancy to your kit, doesn't do much to help you run your ring light on location, and might be a PITA every 4 years when the battery needs to be replaced.

On the flip side, you can run off AC too, even while the battery is charging and it makes it darn hard to forget to bring your portable power with you. If the battery is user replaceable then that will be a big plus.

What I would like is an Einstein 640WS with the Mini Vag builtin and the face plate, flash tube and modeling light at the end of a cable (pluggable) attached to a stand mounting bracket.

Quantum has an extension cable to move the flash tube off the light, I've always wondered how hard it would be to come up with something like that for a monolight. :-)

Possible, but too niche to warrant at this point.

dmward,

I am just wondering why you would like to separate the flash and modeling lamps from the rest of the monolight. For compactness in placing in very tight quarters? If so, cooling might be a very serious issue, as all of the unit's electrical energy not turned to light in flash or modeling is turned to heat. If not for using in a smaller space, then what use do you have in mind? Also, keep in mind that there are already many cheap, very small AC and battery units you can use in spaces like inside lighting fixtures for archtectural use, or inside custom-made light modifiers.

Also, I also had the passing thought that what you were describing is more like what a pack and head arrangement offers than a monolight like PCB Einstein, and that perhaps one of those types of kits might better fit your intended purposes.

As far as building the mini vag into a monolight is concerned, I have a few obvious problems with it. One is that, if the battery is not easily user replacable, and therefore built with a large open access port on the outside of the unit's housing, then replacing it for either continuing a shoot when the battery runs out or replacing a permanently bad battery, requires opening up the unit, never a good thing with a flash unit. If the unit does have an open port design, it must be built at least slightly bigger and still have some potential liability as to environmental sealing. In addition, a separate battery unit can power more than one light at a time, making it potentially cheaper to buy and lighter to carry. And, finally, either way, the elctronics associated with a built-in battery of any design dictate that such an arrangement is just asking for planned obsolescence; when new battery technologies become available, you will have to toss the whole lighting unit to take advantage of them, instead of just buying a new battery unit and keeping your monolight.

But, I guess that, at least for awhile, such a unit would be attractive for those not wanting to deal with separate units for light and power.

LED modeling lamp is a nice solution for a battery powered light. Maybe we'll have an optional LED lamp for Einsteins too at some point?
Having a battery in the light will probably raise the center of gravity and make the light much less stable on a stand and will need extra sand bags.

A flash tube extension cord for Einstein would be welcome. Doesn't have to include a modeling lamp, unless it's a low power LED.