Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Profoto are calling the B1X the “new benchmark for on-location lighting”. And if it’s true, then it’s about time. Given that the $600 Godox AD600 seemed to keep up with the triple-the-cost Profoto B1 just fine, they sure needed to do something. And so they have.
The new Profoto B1X has a bigger battery, brighter modelling light and increased power range when shooting high speed sync. And it keeps the same price as its B1 predecessor.
Here is something I did not see coming. Photographer Robert Hall did a full comparisson between the $600 Godox AD600BM* and the $2,100 Profoto B1.
While you’d think that the Profoto will nuke the AD600, this was not the case at all, and in most parameters it either won the battle or stood up fairly well. There was one exception to that, and I think that it’s one of the main reasons that the B1 is so0 much more expensive.
This is an interesting question. On the Red corner we have hot shoe strobes: they are (relatively) cheap, small and portable and recycle pretty fast, but they need lots of AA batteries. On the Blue corner we have monoblocks; They are big and more cumbersome but they give A LOT of light.
So whats the trade off, when are you better getting several small hot shoe strobes and when are you better off using one big light? This is not a trivial question to answer especially since hot shoe strobes measure in GN, while monoblocks measure in Watt-seconds. now with TTL monoblocks this becomes a really interesting question.
Neil van Niekerk did an empirical test trying to answer that question. His comparison addresses the power aspect while leaving convenience, price, light shape and modularity out, but even at that it gives a good idea about how to begin dealing with the trade offs involved.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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