Affordable Pro Lighting: Too Good To Be True?
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- This is the beast in question and a HUGE thanks to pixapro for hooking me up and letting me test this amazing kit out.
Pixapro and Godox P2400 studio flash
www.essentialp...
Are you looking for a great way to get incredible results on a budget? Are you tired of being quoted outrageous prices by your local commercial photographers? Then you need to watch this video!
In this video, I'll show you how to get results from commercial photographers on a budget. By following my tips, you'll be able to get great shots for a fraction of the price! Not to mention, you'll be able to shoot in amazing locations for a fraction of the cost!
So what are you waiting for? Watch this video and start getting amazing results on a budget!
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If you want to fast forward your lighting skills, head over here www.tinhouse-studio.com/product/lighting-101/
This might be the best lesson out there. Color accuracy across light is something you learn too late.
Yeah it seems to be overlooked by many
as a portrait photograhper i'm super thankful for you explaining in detail why that much power is needed in commercial photography. first, it's very informative, and second, it affirms that "as a professional photographer you need this and that" simply isn't true for everybody, and for (single person) portraits actually a pair of godox MS300 for $100 each really do the job.
Great info Scott! The "non standard" IEC plug is a 15 amp version of its smaller, common cousin, the 10 amp that is used everywhere. These packs easily pull 25 or more amps during recycle and under heavy use, its recommended to use dedicated circuits for them and have them rated accordingly. I own a fleet of Bowens Estime/Traveller packs (3000Ws) and I can tell you first hand that I feel your pain with the locking mechanism on the heads, I crank them down till they creak but large modifiers still droop. Anyone looking to get into this level of lighting would be well advised to go the Godox route just simply because Bowens engineers are behind them.
I perform my own repair work as nobody supports Bowens anymore, just got lucky on finding 36 new capacitors to rebuild three of the packs, expensive but still cheaper than buying new gear. If your flash output starts to deviate, replace caps and good to go for another 20 years of reasonable use. One suggestion I offer is to tie a length of 1/4" bungee to the cable about a foot from where it enters the head, put a loop in the bungee and hang it off the tilt adjust knob. The idea is strain relief for the cable, have had to re terminate a few of my flash heads until I did this trick, the multi core cable is quite fragile. The cable becomes real heavy when the stands are up at 6 or 8 feet off the ground. Oh....and grab a bunch of extra 15 amp IEC leads, guaranteed you will get caught short one day.
3:47 Love it, this is why I love watching your channel - I love your no nonsense approach.
Light is a fascinating thing and nobody really knows what it is. Is it a particle, is it a wave, is it a field perturbation in the ether? This stuff keeps me awake at night as do your lighting quizzes!
I absolutely get where you are coming from Scott, makes perfect sense to stick with the 1200 for what you do.
I shoot high volume events and decided to get the Citi 300 heads simply because they were more than good enough. I didn’t need anything more expensive. I also use the Citi 100s but never mix them as the colour is different, not massively but enough.
Really appreciate the specific applications in these reviews. I've been struggling with Westcott's FJ system and dying for more power, those battery powered packs are a tempting upgrade.
The 1200 Godox make perfect sense for a budget studio I agree with you 100%
Thanks for reminding me about color differences on the old days doing white background we use a color meter to compensate for that problem and gel the strobe light properly but time have change but the fix is the same.
Great topics and spend less and get the best for your money 😊
I’m a landscape photographer (who shoots on film) but I found this very interesting. Great video, Scott.
Nice video, Scott. I always preferred powerpacks with heads than self-contained units, in terms of consistiency. I still use my Balcar Jet 1600, with a 3200 w.s head and accs with nice results.
The bit where you mention the crew knowing how to use the equipment, is huge, and it’s what most people in the comments don’t have a concept of. You’re on a job with a national or global brand with large crew, techs and assistants, they need to know how to use the equipment.
Nothing wrong with Godox, but in the 15 years I’ve had skin in the game, I’ve never seen a Godox product in the field. We all use Profoto or Broncolor because when something blows up, cracks, or stops working, we can rent whatever we need locally while it gets fixed, and it all works together.
For someone who is always flying solo though, or the photog who shoots studio portraits of kids, families, lawyers, etc.. Profoto and Bron don’t make a ton of sense, terrible ROI
ISO 200 " How dare you " LOL
im a savage
He’s out of control, we need to reel him in
@@ddubs43 I think its ok for Scott to explore a little , but when he's hits 800 ISO we'll my need to do a intervention. LOL
great Video. I like the concept of the AD1200 much, because of the AC Adapter and the Battery, you can use both.
yeah they are great bits of kit
Thanks for making this about Pixapro / Godox products. I don't know if you have found this but there are some camera stores who will not take this brand in part exchange as it is on their list of manufacturers that they don't accept. It is such a shame sometimes with product snobbery in photography
I have been using the godox for portraits for a while. I owned some old studio packs but they are like 20-30 years on and so very inconvenient with with pc sync cables everywhere. But thank goodness for rentals!
Ping ponging (or alternating release) is built in in Godox triggers, so all compatible Godox lights can do it. Great content as always!
Thanks for the info!
Thank you for the review on these kits 💵💶
You are so welcome!
just need to change the washer to prevent the head sliding down when carrying a heavy modifier.
As a budding studio photographer, I really do love the profoto b10 system. The duo kit for $6k is really good. The power is 500w but they are really efficient with the output. I love them!
Why not Godox Ad600?
@@Marshallchandra I just wanted something super reliable with a .1-10 power system. Plus their range of modifiers is really nice. But I’m sure the AD600s would have been okay. Also, the amount of shots on one battery were a big pull for event shoots I had when considering them.
IMO, the most overlooked advantage of these Godox packs is the LED modeling lamp. My studio gets pretty warm in the summer time and when my assistant brings in Speedotron (which to your point, he knows like the back of his hand) with the halogens running all day, it gets HOT! Not great for certain subjects. Though, at about $4600 per pack/head combo price difference, I'm probably better off buying a supplementary AC unit. haha
Yes good point. I hadn't thought about that
Haha I spend a good amount of time with a Profoto modeling light hovering over me, she gets warm.
Great advice all around!
A couple of thoughts... Periodically you can buy Broncolor used for far less than new. I paid $12,000 CDN for a 1200L Move kit in 2016, but just bought another demo unit (just the pack, no heads) for $4000 CDN (2387 GBP). Broncolor is such high quality kit, I rarely hesitate buying it used.
Fwiw, Broncolor is made in Switzerland, not China. When you buy Swiss you are not contributing to the CCP.
That matters to me. Cheers
Our pleasure to be able to provide the P2400 & H2400 for test! If anyone needs any help or info regarding the CITI1200 Pro or P2400 just drop a comment our way and we'll be happy to help 😁
Thanks. I will be in touch soon about the citi 1200 lights
Strange question... What is the grassy-looking patch on the wall behind your shooting setup (3:45)? Is it decorative or does it serve a photographic purpose?
No, these are not 2,400 Watts or 1,200 Watts. That's an age-old misinterpretation of W.s or Ws or J.
Watt.seconds or Joules are units of energy consumption like kWh and MJ. As there are 1000 in k for kilo, and 3600 seconds in h for hour, 1 kWh equals 3,600,000 W.s.
As the specification of energy consumption in 1 full power flash says nothing about how much light comes out, we cannot depend on these numbers for that.
Oh and 1 Ws equals 1 Joule.
Measuring energy consumption is not so difficult but measuring "power" is.
So peeps in physics made that easier by defining that power (of an electrical device like a motor or lamp) is defined as energy consumption per second.
That's important with your strobe because if you know how long a full power flash takes, then you can calculate its "power".
The formula is Watt = Watt.seconds per second - W=W.s/s
You may have a 2,000 Watt (2 kW) kettle to boil water for your tea and so you now know that it consumes 2,000 Watt.seconds per second. Leave it boiling for an hour - if possible - and you "burnt" through 2 kWh.
But your strobe may burn through the 2,400 W.s in 1/200 seconds and as that goes 200 times in a second, this makes the power W=W.s/s 480,000 Watt or 480 kW.
Now try to have LED lights with that power.
Your top camera brand speedlight may burn 75 Ws in one full power flash and that is a lot less than 2,400 Ws, right? Well, exposure is on a 2-log exponential base and so, assuming equal photons/Ws efficiency, 150 Ws is 1EV more than 75. Then 300 W.s is another 1 EV (total 2 EV to 75). 600 again is 1 EV more (3 EV total). Then 1200 Ws is another EV more (4 EV) and 2400 EV is yet another EV more (5EV).
That's not a lot in EV and it also means that the shots you use your studio strobe pack on less than full power, you might have been able to do that with speedlights too - for Canon shooters those are called speedlites.
If your studio pack is at 100% at level 10, then, assuming 1 EV less per 1 level down, that gets you at level 5 in the 2,400 Ws studio pack.
Cheapos and Profoto will be at 50 Ws and will not publish the amount of light that really comes out (as per "Guide number").
What power is you car? 30 miles per gallon.
Is this needed with s global shutter camera
Citi 1200 is currently on offer for £1100 pal.
thank you!
Good video Scott. Does this mean I don't have to lug my 1200 Pro with me next time I am at your studio?
As cheap ( comparably ) as the P2400 is, it is still a big considered choice to drop that cash especially for portrait work where 1200ws is for the most part plenty.
CITI 1200 Pro is currently £1140 at the moment so it has come down a bit since you made this video.
Nah haha, I’ll still get you to bring a car full of stuff down
Have found the head tightening issue with the ad600 which is no bueno for me.
Greets from Mexico City!
Here doesn't matter what brand of studio lights you use, there is no repairs for any brand, the worst part it's that you can't buy Broncolor, there is no distributors for that brand. So the best option is to go for the cheapest one. Isn't funny that being so close to U. S. it's so difficult to buy certain equipment?
The solution for the head stop tilting down when a heavy modifier is attached, is to replace the plastic washer (the blue one) for a rubber washer.
Is it better Power Pack Battery or AC Power?
What light do you suggest for para 222? For my own studio and i will also rent my studio soon...
Hello. Can I ask you a name of Carrying wheel case Godox can put p2400 and 2 head in? Thank you
I do super boring high volume photography, use Profoto monolights. Out of like 700ish shots a day I get what, 3 misfires a day on a bad day. I've used the packs before, packs were way better. And yeah, When I am goofing around on my own, I have 2 AD600s and 2 AD200s. Portrait stuff where I don't really want f16, they are fine. But yeah, when even just doing some simple product stuff I tried, everything at full power and ISO going up. Having a few 1200s would be super great for that. The first time I had a big Profoto pack I could use and turn up, man, so useful to have all that headroom to be able to do whatever. I didn't realize how much I worked around not having all that power before.
Hey Scott!
Great video! It left me with two questions!
1) How profoto stands in this? I own a B10+. This comes with battery but not power pack. Are they less powerful or suitable for studio photography?
2) Why not investing in broncolor and you rent yourself the equipment? I know some guys in video production tend to do it.
You content is awesome!
Thanks a lot!
Hey. No idea on Profoto as I rarely use them. But in terms of renting to the client. You can rent a pack out at about £50 a day. They cost £12,000 so it costs 240 shoots to break even. I do about 15 shoots a year and only 3-4 big ones where we rent about 5-6 packs. So 70K investment for me to break even in 80 years...
Of course if you shoot more volume this probably makes more sense.
Paul C Buff has new flash unit: Celestial. The specs and price look interesting from a company that I understand has a pretty good rating.
I used paul c buff for years about a decade ago. Mostly portrait and e-commerce. Best budget lights in the game, at least back then. Absolutely loved them.
I had 5 Einsteins
Godox badly needs to change those handles. I cant use some of my favorite light modifiers anymore because godox makes crap handles that hold less and less over time to the point it immediately drops down now and i can only put basic reflectors and the such on it.
Ha weve been getting pro 11 in recently brilliant bit of kit I guessed 10-12k but it's 16k!
Thanks for sharing your experience with the Godox pack. It’s hard to find actual quality test reviews on these. I’ve actually been thinking about purchasing a couple with a few heads. I was curious with your test, did you use multi lights or just the single light? I would be using these for larger room scenes and would hate for the colors to be all over the place. Also, did you mention you set on the pack how accurate the color is? If that’s the case why would you ever change it from that, does it recycle slower? Thanks in advance for any help.
I actually wanna know.. how do you deal with diffraction when shooting at f22?? is there a way to not get softer images when using super close down stops?
I don't. The only folk who worry about diffraction are internet forum photographers. Clients and Pros just make sure they get what they need in focus. Of course more expensive lenses help, but I don't remember the last time I was looking what what settings would be sharpest.
...but what about diffraction? 😜
Maybe this is a though one: Different lenses perform different on different camera bodys. A lot of photographers praise Leica lenses to the heavens (and a lot of photographers rant them to hell, mainly fo pricing). Would be interessting if you could do a commercial/business point of view comparing some Leica lenses on Leica bodys (becuase one would argue that they would perform best in their nativ habitat) and maybe also some non Leica bodys like Panasonic or Sigma to your daily setup.
I'd love to know what you think of Aputure Kit considering how much it is promoted on UA-cam.
We use them on all video jobs and I have 2 of the 600 pros in the studio which are amazing and propper work horses.
@@TinHouseStudioUK thanks, that is good to know!
For freezing motion, the QT series from Godox is way faster though, like three times. But it’s just specs for me as I don’t have a real world experience with either, so I’d be very curious to have your opinion if you can get your hands on one. Cheers ^ ^
The problem I find with the reporting of the speeds is that one might be faster, but the power it puts out at said speed is so small. No one says "We do 10,000th of a second at 326 watts", which is the actual useful information you want.
@@TinHouseStudioUK Right, they do not communicate very much on that, probably because having 5W of power at 1/10000s is pretty ridiculous. Both models being Godox though, one can assume that with the same power (1200W) being twice as fast will retain twice the power at the same speed... hum, theorically ;)
I've seen someone on YT having problems to freeze liquids with the AD1200Pro hence my initial comment, what's your experience with that, if you care to share please?
Or is it theoretically... gosh my english is rusty haha!
By faster, you mean flash duration! unless your attempting to freeze fast action, that's not really a problem !!
@@richardbierman9856 Yes, that would be to freeze liquids or powder, which I think would require at least 1/5000s to avoid any blur.
But why You cannot do the big jobs with it if it is accurate? Branding is one reason, what are the others?
FWIW that weak-ass lever on the head is easily replaced with a proper metal one that ratchets for cheap.
The P2400 will do pingpong but the awful manual doesn't tell you how. You set the custom function UNITES (misspelled UNITS) to MASK2 and ALT-1 to 1 and ALT-2 to 2 The AD1200Pro does this with UNITS and ALT as does the AD600Pro and AD400Pro
Rob Hall did a video on setting this up a while ago ua-cam.com/video/rAvw6x6segs/v-deo.html
I see in one of the comments someone said that it's available on all Godox light and it's set up on the trigger - mistaken on both pints.
Godox didn't make the Creo generator that was designed back in the day when Bowens had an engineering team. Godox made the battery XMT range of strobes but not the mains XMS range (they had incompatible radio triggers - are you surprised they went bust?).
When WEX revived the brand GODOX made both the XMT and XMS strobes and the radio system is the same fro both so won't work with the old SMS lights)
What about Paul C. Buff Einsteins?
Sadly we can’t get them in the UK
@@TinHouseStudioUK When I started in 2014, I found early footage of Alex Koloskov doing product photography and teaching. I figured the $500 lights were a good choice. Attainable and good quality.
What do you mean by thirty grand "plus a day"? I get the thirty grand bit, by the way ;-)
Sorry it’s my accent haha: I mean £30k or more per day
@@TinHouseStudioUK Ah right! No I’m sorry for mishearing you. I love your accent as well as your extremely useful tips. One of the few on the platform who keep it real and whose information is truly actionable 👍
@@TinHouseStudioUK (for clarity: I thought maybe you meant that the agreement would be £30k plus a day of editing or something…I never did that so I was curious 😅)
Obviously you don’t do e-comm or studio fashion because you’d be using continuous lighting because clients want video too these days, bonus is eye autofocus hits 100% of the time under continuous lighting.
No we don’t do e commerce, but almost every shoot now days has a moving image element to mirror the stills. We place video lights right next to the flash lights so we can keep the look as close as possible
Please don't ring the Bells of Shame, but why not use Continuous Lighting for Photography?
Because is not powerful enough; the ratio between a strobe and an incandescent light (led of course is more efficient) is around 1:10/1:12 that means matching a 100Ws strobe (consider that a big speedlight is around 80Ws) needs a 1000/1200w incandescent light (or led with analogue light emission). Try to focus the size (and power consumption!) differences between a speedlight and a 1000w incandescent head.
To match a 1200Ws head like the Pixapro/Godox 1200 you'll need nearly 15.000W of incandescent lights.
Led lights are in the middle, so around 1:5/1:6 with strobes; you still need a 500/600w COB led to match a speedlight or a Godox AD100, 1200w COB to match the AD200 and 1800w COB to match a relatively standard AD600 head.
sound video!!