Diff for "furinkan/photography/lighting"

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Contents

Buying lights 2011-08-04
Remote triggering and power 2011-09-06

Buying lights 2011-08-04

So I wanted some studio strobes. »Read on »Read on

I considered a few brands:

Elinchrom
Glanz (cheapies)
Paul C. Buff

Buff makes the Alienbees series, which might be a more familiar name to some. They look to be a little cheaper than Elinchrom, should be at least on par in terms of product quality, and the company sounds like they're really smart, switched-on people.

There are some other big brands out there like Bowens, Profoto and Multiblitz. They're hella-expensive though.

The Buff gear looks like the way to go. They have a local distributor, but their markups are kinda... bad. The US store won't sell here though. Get the lights locally and procure the accessories some other way? Maybe?

Item	US	Local
lights	500	700
stands	40	74
brollys	30	66
reflectors	15	38
grid	25	57
receivers	30	54
commander	180	260
carry bags?	13	??

Popped an order in, 2011-08-02. Website is... not impressive. Two timeout errors about being unable to contact the payment provider before finally succeeding, and a blank section where it's meant to say "A confirmation email was sent to the address: <BLANK>"

Tried again on 2011-08-03, after giving them a call. They confirmed my suspicion that the website was having issues yesterday, I feel much better now. Placed the order again, no hassles this time. \o/

2x	Einstein	E640	$699.00 each	1398.01
2x	7" reflector	7AB/R	$37.40 each	74.80
1x	10-degree honeycomb grid	HG10	$57.20 each	57.20
Shipping				70.00
Package discount				-30.60
Total				1569.41

Remote triggering and power 2011-09-06

The lights are pretty cool, but using a PC sync cable sucks big time, and optical slaving is less than ideal. Remote power control would be nice too. »Read on »Read on

The Buff range of gear uses a triggering system of their own creation named Cybersync. It's pretty badass.

Centralised control from a single commander device
Up to 16 individually addressable channels (lights, or groups if you're using 1st-gen gear that does unidirectional communication)
Built-in flashmeter in the commander
Total control of all features of 2nd-gen lights (the Einstein model)
Status feedback from 2nd-gen lights (eg. ready/non-ready charge status)

Another cool thing about Buff is that they have portable power solutions. That are actually portable. And pretty affordable too.

So an order went in.

1x	Cyber Commander	COMMANDER	$266.20 each	266.20
2x	Cybersync CSXCV	CSXCV	$53.90 each	107.80
1x	Vagabond Mini	HG10	$399.00 each	399.00
Shipping				88.48
Coupon discount				-38.65
Total				822.83

-  ⇤ ← Revision 5 as of 2012-01-13 16:08:22 → 
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-== Lights 2011-08-04 ==
+== Buying lights 2011-08-04 ==
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-So I want some studio strobes.
+So I wanted some studio strobes. <<SeeSaw(buying_lights, "Read on")>> {{{{#!wiki seesaw buying_lights
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-Considered:
+I considered a few brands:
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-Buff makes the Alienbees series, which might be a more familiar name to some. They look to be a little cheaper than Elinchrom, should be at least on par in terms of product quality, and sound like really smart, switched-on people.
+Buff makes the Alienbees series, which might be a more familiar name to some. They look to be a little cheaper than Elinchrom, should be at least on par in terms of product quality, and the company sounds like they're really smart, switched-on people.
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-The Buff gear looks like the way to go. They have a local distributor, and their markups are kinda... bad. The US store won't sell here though. Get the lights locally and procure the accessories some other way?
+The Buff gear looks like the way to go. They have a local distributor, but their markups are kinda... bad. The US store won't sell here though. Get the lights locally and procure the accessories some other way? Maybe?
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+}}}}
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+The lights are pretty cool, but using a PC sync cable sucks big time, and optical slaving is less than ideal. Remote power control would be nice too. <<SeeSaw(buying_triggers, "Read on")>> {{{{#!wiki seesaw buying_triggers
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Buying lights 2011-08-04

Remote triggering and power 2011-09-06