DIY Photography

Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

Paul C. Buff announces Celestial, a portable strobe with HSS and TTL capability

Jan 4, 2023 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Paul C. Buff lighting company, producers of such lights as the Einstein, AlienBees and DigiBee lighting products, has announced a new strobe called the Celestial. What makes this light special? Well, in the grand scheme of things, not much. But in the Buff lineup, it means they’ve finally got a small portable strobe that supports High Speed Sync and TTL flash metering – only a decade behind the competition.

It’s a 500Ws strobe with a light output that Buff says is “similar to the 640Ws Einstein” strobe, with a 12-stop brightness range. It has a recycle time of only 1.5 seconds and syncs with shutter speeds all the way up to 1/8,000th of a second. It also features a “160 Watt equivalent” LED modelling lamp.

This isn’t the first strobe Buff has released with HSS and TTL capability. They announced the Link back in 2020, which introduced those features into their range. But it didn’t get released until 2021 and is pretty expensive and unwieldy for location work and used an external brick for power. This is Buff’s first all-in-one self-contained battery-powered light with those features. The Celestial is a little less powerful than the Link, coming in at 500Ws vs 800Ws, but it also offers a much better price tag, at $650 vs $1200.

It uses the company’s Hub trigger for Nikon or Canon as the Link with receivers built into the Celestial itself. It’s a very primitive-looking trigger with just a couple of buttons to control everything. When compared to something like the Godox XPro, this doesn’t look like a very efficient user interface when used on a shoot n location. You can connect to it using a smartphone app for iOS or Android, but that just adds an extra layer of hassle that most people aren’t going to want to deal with.

There’s a very stark difference in approach to the design of the Buff Hub trigger vs others on the market today.

Another big issue with Buff lights is the modifiers. Buff has their own modifier mount and their own line of modifiers. I can’t think of a single 3rd party company off the top of my head that still makes Buff-compatible modifiers today. And with many photographers switching to companies like Godox over the last decade – or who now also shoot video and have picked up a bunch of continuous LED lights from various brands, not being able to use their existing Bowens mount modifiers is going to put them off immediately.

I was really hopeful that Buff was coming back in a big way in 2020 when the Link was announced. However, it kind of feels like they still think it’s the early-2000s when Buff ruled the low-budget and entry-level strobe market and everybody was still just figuring all this digital photography stuff out. The lighting landscape has changed massively since the days when Buff and Yongnuo ruled the beginner flash market.

I still hope Buff can figure out a way to become what they were 15-20 years ago, but I’m not confident that it’ll happen.

The Paul C Buff Celestial will be available to buy for $649.99 from January 20th from the company’s website.

[via PetaPixel]

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Paul C. Buff is back with the LINK battery-powered, TTL & HSS-capable strobe Elinchrom launches the ELB 500 TTL – Their most powerful portable TTL strobe ever A review of the new Cactus X-TTL cross platform flash trigger firmware with HSS and TTL First look at the Elinchrom ELB 500 TTL portable battery powered strobe

Filed Under: Gear Tagged With: 500Ws, Celestial, flash photography, Gear Announcement, Paul C. Buff, Portable Strobes

About John Aldred

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

« How to face and overcome your impostor syndrome as a photographer
Security camera captures raccoon trying to catch falling snowflakes »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup
DIYPhotography

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Recent Posts

  • Watch: How good (or bad) is an $8.50 tripod?
  • How to light and photograph Lego building interiors
  • Lighting Setup: How to light your portraits with £50 LED tubes
  • Review: Insta360 announces its first gimbal – The AI-tracking Insta360 Flow
  • World Press Photo 2023 regional winners show why AI will never kill photography

Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy