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Profoto announce X versions of the B10 and B10Plus
- Thread starter tugwilson
- Start date
Yeah I saw this. Thankfully didn't make me feel bad for buying the B10s 6 months ago.
I still don't quite understand constant lights and brightness. How far away are these from being practical for video purposes? Or will a dedicated video light still be the better option? My B10s are nice, but definitely not bright enough to mix with any sort of ambient light.
I still don't quite understand constant lights and brightness. How far away are these from being practical for video purposes? Or will a dedicated video light still be the better option? My B10s are nice, but definitely not bright enough to mix with any sort of ambient light.
tugwilson
Senior Member
They make it hard to compare with dedicated video lights. They quote Lumens which is a measure of the light emitted. Most other manufacturers quote Lux at specific distances. It's not easy to convert one to the other as it depends on the light spread which in turn depends on the modifier.
Another problem is that Bi-Colour lights have different intensities depending on the colour temperature and they don't specify the colour temperature.
What can be said is that for the same price you could buy
A Nanlite Forza 500 (not Bi-Colour) and have change
An Aputure LS600x Pro and have to add about £400
Two Godox VL300s (not Bi-Colour) and have change
All three options would give you serious firepower.
I tend to think about B10s in a different way. Because hey, they're still FLASH tubes in the first place
All the video stuff you get is a bonus.I don't know any better way to compare but Yongnuo 300 III has 2280 lumen and Yongnuo 600 Air has 4000lm (both of course are dedicated LED video lights). Profoto B10X sits at 3250lm. How I look at it is I get world class flash tube with built-in beefed-up Yongnuo 300 III into them
Indoors it should almost always be good enough for back light, hair light, or fill light. Doable as a main light when lighting one person. Of course depends on situation and ones needs.
I really hoped the B10 upgrade will up the continuous light game some more. But how possible was that? Do you guys know any FLASH lights which are better for video than B10X?
tugwilson
Senior Member
I know of any battery powered strobe which is really useful as a general purpose video light. It's a simple matter of basic physics. When you design a battery powered strobe you want it to be small and light and you're not too bothered about fan noise. You use a fairly light battery with limited capacity. You use limited size heatsinks and larger, faster fans. Dedicated video lights over ~60W have large heatsinks and separate power blocks with high capacity, heavy V-Lock batteries.I tend to think about B10s in a different way. Because hey, they're still FLASH tubes in the first place
I don't know any better way to compare but Yongnuo 300 III has 2280 lumen and Yongnuo 600 Air has 4000lm (both of course are dedicated LED video lights). Profoto B10X sits at 3250lm. How I look at it is I get world class flash tube with built-in beefed-up Yongnuo 300 III into them
Indoors it should almost always be good enough for back light, hair light, or fill light. Doable as a main light when lighting one person. Of course depends on situation and ones needs.
I really hoped the B10 upgrade will up the continuous light game some more. But how possible was that? Do you guys know any FLASH lights which are better for video than B10X?
I'm shure these light would be fine if you're doing zoom calls or the like
The PCB Link may well be an exception to this though I don't know what the fan noise is like. However it does weigh 4Kg with the battery!
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I actually jumped on these. When I first got the B10 I thought of them as a system strobe replacement for multiple brands with rechargeable batteries (I prefer off camera strobe mount). As I used them more often, the recycle time bugged me a bit, so I got the plus version, which halfed the recycle time at the same power output and made them more useful to me.
and now that we have the new x version with improved (halfed) recycle times I’m going back to the smaller units. I’m planning to keep the plus around for larger projects/spaces or larger modifiers when I don’t need to go all the way to Pro packs.
as for video lights, a nice application is to set the heads at different color temps and being able to see what each light is doing individually (in a dark room of course). But I have used them to augment existing light, as eye light, shoot stills instead of a strobe (when the sync fails), even as workslights when packing up at night.
and now that we have the new x version with improved (halfed) recycle times I’m going back to the smaller units. I’m planning to keep the plus around for larger projects/spaces or larger modifiers when I don’t need to go all the way to Pro packs.
as for video lights, a nice application is to set the heads at different color temps and being able to see what each light is doing individually (in a dark room of course). But I have used them to augment existing light, as eye light, shoot stills instead of a strobe (when the sync fails), even as workslights when packing up at night.
tugwilson
Senior Member
What I find a bit surprising is that the full power recycle time is reduced but the minimum power recycle time is unchanged. It would be interesting to know the old and new recycle time as the power is reduced by one stop.
If you have a suggestion to measure this quickly while I still have both units in my possession I'll give this a try...I just shot with the B10x this morning, after initializing and firmware update it all went fine and recycle was nice and quick, I shot some in full sun, no additional reflector (for a strobe/paparazzi look) with the Z6 and continuous high and no drops in light power, around 6-7 power setting (auto TTL), subjects 6-8ft away.
tugwilson
Senior Member
Unfortunately not. I could hack something with an Arduino to measure the time from the flash to the beep but I'm a long way away from you.
I had a look at the user guide for the new lights to see if Profoto gave the flash durations at ach stop, sadly they don't. However they quote the energy at each stop but for the B10X they show a two stop drop between 4.0 and 3.0 (Page 34) surely this is a mistake?
I will test this week and share any insights (tomorrow im on a horse farm, so strobe is not happening). My experience wit Profoto is that it's generally pretty consistent, especially the current pro packs and B10 /B10+. There used to be some non linear fall off when dialing in larger steps, aka 1/3 is fine, 2 stops would be a quick remeasure (certainly on Acute kits and Pro7).
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