Strobe lighting Q's

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mikeyp69

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Hi my first post here, so pls bear with me!

I am after a kit of 3 x strobes for a home studio. Having done a fair amount of googling (which quite often ends up at Ken Rockwells site :thinking:), I quite like the kit from a USA manufacturer - Novatron NSV6003. This is a kit with 3 lights, stands, brollies etc. What I particularly like is that it comes with a central mains-powered power-pack, where the power for ALL lights is controlled with one knob on the pack.

This system is US$1354 delivered from Adorama (~£930+5% import duty+VAT).

All other systems comparibly priced systems I have found have power controlled on the lights themselves, which makes adjusting the power a bit of a bore.

Any suggestions?

Ta !
 
elemental make a system that can have the lights controlled from a remote or from a laptop

I'll go find you a linky
 
Suggest you find a guy on here called Garry Edwards, he'll help you out and give you some sound advice on your lighting needs.
 
You'll also need to sort something out that converts your nice British 240v into Yankified 120v at a quality that won't send power surges to your lights.

Personally, I'd look to buy something already in the UK. Depending on your budget, perhaps the Elinchrom Quadras if you need to go portable too. If you're just looking at basic mains powered studio lights, there's some sexy Bowens ones out there, as well as the other usual suspects (Elinchrom, Lencarta, Lastolite, etc). Alien Bees are also going to be retailing back in the UK again in a few months (although they may be similarly priced to the Bowens pro jobbies, without being able to sustain the same quality and workload from what I've been reading so far).
 
aye, the new paul c buff lights look pretty sweet...more pricey though. Elemental are good, their visico lights look pretty neat.

Ignore rockwell.
 
Thx for the quick and useful replies so far.

I should add that the 240v to 110v transformer is no problem. Cheap as chips + already have one. I regularly travel across the pond so made-in-USA is no issue for me.

M.
 
TBH Novatron are not a well regarded make, even in the U.S., and IMO by the time you've factored in the voltage compatibility issue, import cost and support issues I don't think they're a good choice.

What seems to attract you to them is the fact that they have generator systems (known as pack & head in the U.S.) but then so do Elinchrom, Bowens, Bron, Profoto and others.

The advantages of generator systems are as you said - the controls are within easy reach, also the actual flash heads have very little inside them so are small and light. They are also available with far more power than any mono heads.

But they have disadvantages too: Expensive being one of them but the main one is lack of control of individual heads - some (assymetric) do have individual control but it can be pretty limited and it's probably fair to say that most of the pro studios that use them have a separate generator for each light, to maintain fine control.

If you decide to go for mono heads instead (most people do) then you're spoilt for choice. Personally I see remote control as a nice-to-have rather than something that's actually useful (I have remote control on an Elinchrom Style 1200 but never bother to actually use it) and am not at all sure that it's worth having at all, and certainly not when the flash head isn't positioned somewhere totally inaccessible.

As for manufacturers, I think it's fair to say that everyone has their own preference and that each has their own advantages. You won't go far wrong with Bowens, Elinchrom or Lencarta. Elinchrom have their own accessory fitting and their accessories are expensive (but pretty good), Bowens and Lencarta use the S-fit accessory mount, with an enormous range of more affordable accessories.
 
agreed, remote control would be nice, but I only ever feel myself wishing that I had it when a head is high up on a boom.
 
Am quite liking the Bowens....having done some browsing tonight. The entry level Gemini seems remarkably good value at £570 for a twin kit.
 
david1701 said:
elemental make a system that can have the lights controlled from a remote or from a laptop

I'll go find you a linky
Click to expand...

Remote, yes. Laptop, no. The ones from Elemental you mean are the Visico Digital LR lights.

You're possibly getting them mixed up with the more advanced Rime Lite XB Primes (pictured below), which you can get from Viewfinder Photography. In addition to that you can get pack-and-head ("boom light") versions of these lights but I don't think those models are sold in Europe.

rimelite-bxprime.jpg


Other systems you can control from laptop are
  • Elinchrom Skyport & RX
  • Profoto Air
(Both of these brands have pack-and-head systems too.)

I did a post on it fairly recently here.

Sorry to digress from the point in the original post, which was probably more about monolights vs. packs-and-heads. See Garry's reply above for more on that.
 
smooth, I had them a little mixed up :D

Cheers for sorting me out selbosh nb I just turn dials cos tis cheaper :D
 
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