cgardner Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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BrianO wrote:
Not only the Alien Bees; I was pleasantly surprised to find that you can get an Elinchrom D-Lite One for almost the same price as a Canon 320EX. I could get two of the Elinchroms for less than one Canon 600EX-RT.
Through-the-lens flash metering and camera-based control has its price.
Not disagreeing but will comment that wasn't the case in 2003-4 when I was considering buying a set of lights.
Back then the choices for a hobbyist were limited on the low end. I looked at brands like Elinchrom but they didn't have lower cost models like the D-Lite back then and I just couldn't justify the cost. That's also the reason it took me so long to buy a set of lights I'd wanted a set of lights for some time but couldn't justify the cost as a hobby.
The lack of products for the hobbyist market is evidenced by going back and looking discussions about what lights to buy back in 2002 when I started on the forums. Most discussions were about the relative merits of buy a set of halogen shop lights from Home Depot vs. buying a set of Vivitar flashes for the studio in the garage.
The idea of buying a set of studio lights didn't enter the discussion until the "buzz" about some new weird Dayglow Yellow light called an "Alien Bee".
I still remember the UPS guy when he delivered mine. He asked, "What the heck is in these boxes...." marked "Alien Bees". I shook my head sideways and said, "You really don't want to know...." Then told him.
Not giving Buff all the credit, but I observed how he created a new demand for studio lighting gear which really hadn't existed in the hobbyist market by making it affordable and holding the hands of inexperienced customers with good customer service. In my case I looked at Calumet brand lights which were similar in price / quality but it was hearing accounts from AB owners about the great customer service that tipped the balance in that direction. Even pros were standing in line to buy Vagabond power packs and his $500 ring light.
The big boys of studio lighting just responded to the new demand Buff created
Vagabond is significant because it changed the paradigm for location lighting from the "Strobist" appoach with speedlights vs. studio lights with an battery inverter. If one swallowed the early Stobist Kool-Aid that manual is the only "ethical" way to do lighting (quoting Hobby back a few years ago) it means just carrying a few more pounds of gear. Even Hobby made the switch from speedlights to Prophoto (no doubt for free in return for hawking them).
But if Canon had incorporated radio control into the EX line from day one there probably wouldn't have been a Strobist movement. It didn't because regulation of radio devices is a logistical nightmare. PW filled the gap with the early units making the manual+ PW trigger Stobist movement possible. I'd been doing OCF for about 30 years at that point, but with $80 flashes + $20 Wien Peanut optical trigger.
Back in 2004 when I switched to from Vivitar 285HV I'd triggered optically to Canon speedlights (generic use of the term). I already had my studio lights and it was a choice between buying three PW to trigger the Vivitars I already had (about $600) or spend $800 for the Canons which would allow me to use Manual flash the same way, and offer ETTL, HHS and remote control.
I participated in a lot of discussions regarding the cheap manual flashes like the SB-28 made obsolete by the switch to digital bodies + $300 PW radio triggers. The early Stobist "ethic" (Hobby's term not mine) vs. system was based largely on the fact he thought all TTL metering sucked and manual control was always superior. His was also pro-Nikon and bad-mouthed the "line of sight IR" Canon system. He modified his stance after "Radio Poppers" came on the scene and he actually tried ETTL ratios. Then the debate wasn't that manual was always better but that radio TTL was better than the build-in optical triggering.
The radio poppers and PW ttl units changed the paradigm again from using manual flashes to a debate on the merits of using the optical triggering on system flashes (which cost nothing) or spending an extra $1,000 or TTL radio triggers. The original "Strobist" idea of cheap obsolete film era flashes like the SB-28 is still around but not the "holy grail" it once was, but the "fear" of optical IR signaling Hobby fostered continued and people bought the new TTL radios convinced optical didn't work without actually bothering to really try it.
Canon has changed the paradigm again by integrating radio into the EX line. The 600EX-RT is more expensive than the 580ex or 580EX, but a pair of 600EX-RT is cheaper than a pair of 580exII and third party radio triggers. The market share for Radio Poppers and PW Flex dropped because Canon finally ate their lunch. Now with speedlights its more a debated between buying the integrated radio in the 600EX-RT vs. using existing optical system flash with cheap Chinese PW flex clones.
If Canon ever decides to create a 320WS studio light that mounts directly on stand with a speedring and integrates into the EX system it will start eating in Buff's light/vagabond market. But I wouldn't be surprised if Buff markets such a product first. All he needs to do is reprogram the Einstein to recognize the Canon protocols.
Edited on Jan 31, 2013 at 10:52 AM · View previous versions
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