On 27-Mar-10 07:54, herschel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
any idea on flash duration for these? I have a bunch of studio lighting but it's all 240V. I'm moving to the States around August and I'll look for a little commercial work I must weigh up the option of selling and re-buying with getting all the transformers changed. I find that with digital SLR (Even my full-frame) I almost always have too much light to get the shallow DOF I need (Min ISO 200) But some lights have a ridiculously long flash duration (650th) and I need high-speed to capture blur-free movement.
Yes, generally studio strobes are fairly long-duration at full power (though mostly they go under 1/1000 sec. at the low end, and you're talking about having too much power).
Hey, the flash duration info on the AB400 is at <http://www.alienbees.com/specs.html>, measured two different ways (duration over 50% outputp and duration over 10% output). They behave the reverse of everything I've seen before, longer exposure at lower power. But the AB400 gets down to 1/2000 second over 10% output at full power; not nearly as fast as an SB-800 can go, but decently fast I think.
It's a big change to have ISO 200 as the MINIMUM you use :-), I think it was like ISO 100 max previously, with 64 fairly common and some 25 in the studio (I know I shot K25 in the studio some). And with medium-format gear we mostly needed a much smaller aperture than we want today. So we don't need the kind of power we used to need (if we're using a DSLR in the studio now).
I don't know about legalities here, but it's perfectly possible to wire your studio space with 240V and just change the plugs on your existing units -- if they don't mind 60Hz instead of 50Hz, anyway. In fact if the cords are detachable, and you can find a 240V rated US 240V plug to the right other end, you might just swap cords. Given international shipping, you might be better off selling and buying something new here though.
-- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
