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Portable Strobes

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

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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.

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Elinchrom releases FIVE – A 522Ws battery strobe with 450 full power flashes and charges over USB-C

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Elinchrom has announced the Elinchrom FIVE. It’s a 522Ws battery-powered moonlight that offers up to 450 full-power pops on a single charge.  It also features active charging, so you can keep it topped up all the time while using it when you’re near power. And we’re not just talking AC power, either. You can charge it up from any USB-C source without any proprietary chargers or spare batteries required.

It features a built-in continuous running 26W bi-colour LED modelling light, which should also be bright enough for some video uses. It syncs up to 1/8000 with High Speed Sync (yeah, we’re not talking about that tail sync nonsense), as well as TTL with a manual lock and built-in Bluetooth for remote control from the Elinchrom Studio App without the need for Elinchrom Bridge.

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Godox has now officially announced the AD1200Pro – and it’ll cost you $1,599

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The leaks have been floating around for a while, but now the complete specs for the Godox AD1200Pro have been released, including the price – which is not insignificant. Strangely, though, it’s not showing up on the Godox website yet, although B&H now has a listing up with the full specs – although no photos. Pixapro in the UK also has a listing with a price now, which is where the photos in this post have come from.

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More specs on the Godox AD1200Pro released by Pixapro

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In December, word of an upcoming Godox AD1200Pro got out. As usually happens, Adorama popped up a listing almost immediately afterwards. That listing didn’t really reveal much except for a few product photos, though. Now, the UK’s biggest Godox distributor, Pixapro, has also put up a listing for the Pixapro CITI1200Pro, showing off some of the specs for the new unit.

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Westcott announces FJ400, portable but powerful strobe and FJ-X2m, universal wireless trigger

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Westcott has just announced a new strobe and an accompanying wireless trigger. The Westcott FJ400 is a portable 400Ws AC/DC strobe with less than 1 s recycle time at full power. It’s launched along with the FJ-X2m is a universal trigger which pairs with virtually any camera brand, so you don’t need a brand-specific trigger.

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How to balance your strobes with ambient light on location

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Many users of flash feel quite comfortable with it in the studio. The studio makes things fairly straightforward. You expose to eliminate all the ambient light and then you add it back where you want it with your strobes or speedlights. But when many newer flash users struggle when they get out on location, where you can’t or don’t want to completely kill the ambient light, but need to add flash.

In this video, Jay P Morgan at The Slanted Lens looks at how to mix strobes with the ambient light and how to balance them outdoors to achieve a good exposure.

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Profoto’s new B10 Plus doubles the power of the B10 to 500Ws with a 25% price increase

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Profoto has announced the new B10 Plus strobe, doubling the power of the B10 from 250Ws to 500Ws. It’s a little longer than the B10, coming in at 9.3″ long vs 7″, but offers 10 stops of range, up to 1/50,000 sec t.05 flash duration in freeze mode, and up to 100 metres wireless triggering.

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Bowens is back from the dead, and they’ve brought a 500Ws Lithium Ion powered TTL strobe with them

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When we first heard that Bowens was going into liquidation, and then the official announcement that came a few days later, it was the end of an era. After 94 years in business, one of the oldest flash manufacturers out there was closing for good. Or were they? At the time, it seemed so. But now, it looks like no, they’re back.

Bowens was bought out by the AURELIUS investment company along with Calumet back in 2016. AURELIUS also owns WEX Photo Video, who has now pretty much entirely consumed Calumet in the UK. And the Bowens name now looks set to be the WEX “own brand” lighting system. Today they’ve announced that Bowens is back, and they’re kicking off the relaunch with the XMT500 strobe.

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Lume Cube AIR is a super-portable, app-controlled light for your photo and video work

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After the original Lume Cube, here comes the upgrade. Lume Cube AIR has just been released, and it’s a lighter, slimmer and more portable lighting solution for content creators. Just like its predecessor, it’s durable, shock-proof and waterproof, and it’s an affordable little light.

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The Godox XPro-P flash trigger is a “game changer” for Pentax photographers

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I’ve reviewed the Godox XPro trigger before, a little over a year ago. Normally, I wouldn’t review the same product again just because it comes out with compatibility for a different camera system. My original review was with the XPro-C, but I didn’t review the XPro-N, XPro-F, XPro-S or XPro-O. So why am I posting a review of the XPro-P for Pentax?

Well, to put it simply, it’s kind of a big deal – at least for Pentax shooters. Pentax has traditionally had very little 3rd party flash support. It’s had some from Cactus with the whole X-TTL thing, but the recent demise of the RQ250 has left Pentax shooters with very little confidence in Cactus’ future. Other options have been iffy at best. But now there’s a new kid in town. The Godox XPro-P.

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