Lessons

Lesson Info

Our 2 Favorite Medium Strobes

It is time for our two favorite medium strobes what are these? Well, these are for four to five times the power of pakistan robes yet they are still more portable than a full studio stroke and we're not even covering really studio strobes in this course is going to be saved for later down the road but we will be doing quite a bit of medium strove action why? Because you're going to find out flashing with a flash not like flashing people that are walking by you on the street but with for purposes of photography when you are in midday sunlight and you are trying to add liked to have seen if you want to overpower the sun and use a light modifier a pocket strobe is not going to be enough that's what we have to turn to at least medium strobes if not going to full strobes but medium shows for the most part will be able to overpower the sun even with modifications so long as they're held at least someone close to the subject where the pocket strobe we're gonna need three to five them to be ab...

le to do the same thing that gets cumbersome. Okay, so let's talk about our two favorite medium stroh's these air stroke that we've taken on many, many shoots these air brands and well brands as in pro photo that we've used a lot and bolt that we've used a lot thunderbolt and different names and so forth but these air just two flashes that we've used enough to recommend wholeheartedly let start from this side we have one option so basic representing two options to one is a high power manual flash so this is a manual medium strobe the other one is a high power this is a full feature medium strobe over on the right side the provo toby too ok so manual full feature so over here on the left side you can see we have the this's the bolt maybe twenty two this is actually the boldly be twenty two sorry this guy right here the bolt v b twenty two it looks like frankenstein looks like this crazy thing. It's ah it's an open bulb flash which is kind of nice for several things. If he's bold burnout you can replace them very, very easily. They're very inexpensive on dh you can be good to go again. The unit is very well built, actually, but you'll notice that this is branded on her bolt if you buy this through being h it's sold under the bolt brand but if you buy this from other brands like you can actually buy from chita and they'll be brandon or chita there also go docks I think the original brand was actually the go doc's geo dio ex but regardless of the brand, they're actually made in the same place, and they just, you know, brand them accordingly based on where they're going and so forth in the world and whatever retailing I don't know, it's confusing. Frankly, as a consumer, I find it kind of irritating, but whatever, but these work extremely well. Now, to have to basically power this guy, you're going to need the battery pack. So this is the cyclone peopie four thousand d r with the most ridiculous name the world. I don't know why. What is the vd twenty two even mean, I don't know, I don't know why they can't give them more simple names, whatever. So with these, you're gonna have to have a little cable that's going to connect you to the battery pack. Now I'm going to show you that cable without hopefully dropping my battery pack. There we go. This is the little coil cable that it comes with. You can also get a double headed cable, okay, so you can get a cable that will actually go toe both these ports when you're firing one single flash that will reduce the recycle time by about half, so the recycled time when you're using full power is about seven seconds now that sounds like a lot, it is actually a lot but with that cable, it takes it down to three point five seconds or around four seconds, and the other thing you need to remember is that you're firing at one of one power is equivalent two, four, two, five pocket strobes, which means that you don't have to use this at full power, but if you do, you're going to be looking at a minimum of four seconds up to seven, second and so forth to recycle, depending on which cable you're using. But price point is five hundred nine bucks for the v twenty two, along with the battery pack that's for your a single flash head. Now we have to add on third party radio systems, or you can also, I believe, bold at least the other bran. So go doc's has their own radio triggering system. We didn't get it for the bulls because I don't know if it was available at that time, but it is available. They have their own third party system or they have their own factory system. You can get to trigger those we were using pop quizzes, plus threes, which if you get two of these, that three hundred bucks extra, so a hundred bucks for basically one off camera flash head now, if you want to stack two heads. You're looking at another four hundred five hundred dollars so around thirteen hundred dollars is your price point if you want to head for double the power off of that single battery pack does remember recycled times will suffer the more you try and run through a single battery pack okay, so you're looking around that rough price range but you're getting four to five times the power so while it sounds like a lot if you were to get four foa takes metros or five photos metro's flashes to match this you're looking at farm or you're looking at sixteen hundred two thousand dollars even if you're trying I mean and that becomes very cumbersome I mean how are you going to fire those five flashes together to match the power of this so if you need the power it's a great option ok it's very simple to use that's one of the pro that's super simple use the interface in the back is very easy just opened up and start going is very powerful it's rated at three hundred sixty watt seconds I always say cautious of factory settings ok or factory ratings because it's roughly four to five pocket strobe which puts it around like maybe two fifty three hundred watt seconds I don't know about three sixty but whatever it's always based on how they they decide to measure it there's not really a standardized system to go across the board on that so it's relatively inexpensive for the power that you're getting we have a high capacity external battery it's simple to use and we have replaceable bolton other cons is that it's a manual flash on lee okay, so you don't have your curtain sink, you don't have high speed sink or any of that, which means that you're going to need to use neutral density filters if you're using a manual flash and you don't have high speed sync with that manual flash then, which he wouldn't, because only full future flashes have that, then you need to be using neutral density filters to cut down the light so and slow the sink speed down to something that will actually sink with a pocket wizard or other radio trigger. Okay, so the other cons where's the slow recycle time without that other special dual headed wire that cable also the output and color consistency can vary a little bit from shot to shot. You're going to notice this with inexpensive flashes, the color temperature and output can vary slightly between images. For most people, this isn't going to make a huge difference, but if you are shooting professionally and you need consistent color and power output from image to image, you need to go with something more professional like a pro photo or or anything above that range because that's what these are designed for basically okay, s so we require third party about radio triggers there's not a raging or built in or you can use the factory one but you still have to buy that separately. Also, the selection of modifiers is the other con to this basically, you're going to need to get modifiers for your unit here and the factory themselves have a certain number of modifiers. But outside of that I mean there's not that many modifiers that they offer you can get, like a beauty dish you can get like, you know, it comes with a few different types of reflectors and so forth. Outside of that you're going to need to look to third party devices that actually work with this. And because it's an open source, bold head, you know you have to do a little bit testing and see what works the one that we found that works the best is the pro photo or if I speed, ring it, allow this to mount will demonstrate it later, and it can fit all the way inside and power that okay, let's, go on to our high power are basically our medium strobe that's a full feature flash and that's this guy, this is the profile toby too all right, this is just actually barely been released, which is quite awesome now of course with this guy we have our sink port right here but the great thing about the b two system okay the great break the great thing about pro photo is that it works with the air tl remo system which is this guy now I have shoes on all these things by the way just don't be surprised when it arrives and it doesn't have a shoe this is how it comes ok just a quick little note there I just want things to stand up in the look pretty in this shout to you I'm here look at me and they wouldn't do that if they were just lying on their sides all right so this guy is absolutely fantastic why? Because we have full tl functionality we have full feature functionality we have high speed sync rear curtain sink we have everything controlled grouping all that kind of stuff from this simple user interface and look I still have the plastic thing out here too on everything keep it nice people keeping nice so we can control all here and it's an extremely elegant design again I always test any of these items that come to me my first test is can I take it out the box and use it without reading a single manual if I can then I consider the user interface in the design of it very intuitive and this follows that to the t this is the most intuitive radio system I think I've ever used on it it's absolutely fantastic it has a beautiful display as well so with this I can control power settings I control everything on those on the be to control all the settings and so forth just directly from here I don't need anything externally so this already has the radio built into this so I don't need any additional cables and so forth all right, so with this system well what are we getting the downside to the b two obviously is the price point okay? We're looking at twenty two hundred dollars just for the bee to kit but that doesn't include this air tl system okay, you need the airtel remote and that's another four hundred dollars so for your first off camera flash you're looking at twenty six hundred dollars if you want to get a second head for the b two you're looking at another eight hundred dollars which puts you at thirty four hundred dollars so in total you're working at roughly three times the price of the bolt the manual flash option overcome the left side so you have a good budget manual medium strobe option and you have a great kind of investable professional full feature option over here on the right side the benefits are of course tt l first carson sector and seek hs says we already mentioned we have a powerful four to five equivalent pakis trobe output which again this is rated at around two forty watt seconds. This is three, sixty one seconds. Honestly, they're extremely similar. I would not say that this puts out in your light then this guy, they're very similar in that range, so I would just say they're roughly around five pocket strobes in power. We have fantastic full power recycled times and you don't need extra cables. You don't need anything, this guy, this battery pack and this is one of the things that you get when you go pro photo when you go with the professional siri's options, you get better recycle times more consistent color temperatures, more consistent power from shot to shot we're getting one point four second full power ri cycles on this guy that means we're putting off five times the power of pakistan robe and it's recycling three times as fast as a popular two to three times as fast as a pocket strobe. Consistently we get a beautifully simple radio system, a polish design operation. Everything on this is incredibly simple to use its very polished, very well made. The rubbers and the materials used are extremely high quality. You drop this guy it's going to keep working, but don't drop it that's seriously, why would you want to drop this guy it's expensive, don't drop it all right? And we get consistent flat recycle power and temperature output so if you're you know and the way that matters is when we want to get everything into post production and let's say we did a product shoot, we have one hundred images we want a batter process, everything you better hope the power and the temperature is consistent to build a batch process all those if it's not, then you have to make small adjustments between every single image and it's a workflow problem, it creates more time. Yes, you can still get the same results with one of these guys, but I'm going to save a tremendous amount of time with one of these guys. Also with pro photo, we get the whole lineup a profile modifiers and guess what? These heads are designed to fit all pro photo modifier, so you get that whole lineup of heads and and modification that will fit your flash head. So I'm in the lineup that profiler has this bar none probably the most extensive lineup of flash modifiers you get, so they're fantastic for that. The main con I mean, really, the on ly con that you're going for here is again three times the investment, okay, so it's I always say this it's not three times more expensive because guess what, you're getting three times the quality and the usage and the workflow savings and everything, you're getting all that with this, but it is three times the investment. Okay, so this isn't over priced. What is its value based on what you're getting but it's expensive it's, an investment they're going to have to make. But if it's one that you can make, it is highly worthwhile to do so. All right, so that's it for our two favorite medium strobes. I gave you guys two options, both of which we've used extensively. They're both options that we can stand wholeheartedly behind. One on the budget manual medium strobe side, which is the bolt, maybe twenty two and one on the professional full feature side, which is the pro photo. Be too.