jcolman Offline Upload & Sell: On
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deepbluejh wrote:
I thought I read somewhere these lights are approximately 180w/s, but it looks like I was mistaken. The website claims 153w/s. Regular 580s are right at 60 w/s.
Edit: And now that I think about it, I can see the lack of a zooming head as being a big disadvantage. With a 28mm reflector, oftentimes a LOT of light gets wasted if you are a large distance away from your subject. With a speedlite you can zoom in to ~100mm or so and get much more efficient use of the power you have.
I see to remember a similar issue back when I used an Alien Bee B400 (160w/s) for on-location portraits. Good power, but with the standard reflector (90 degree), the spread was too large much of the time and a lot of light got wasted. With a B1600 I never lacked power, but I was stuck carrying around a really heavy monolight all day long.
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I did some testing with the CL-180, the Canon 580EX I and Sunpack 383 lights. I measured the output with my Sekonic flash meter. The lights were set up 3' from the meter and full power. ISO was set to 100 on the meter.
The CL-180 with the standard reflector gave me a reading of f/45. Recycle time was 2 sec.
The Sunpack 383 measured f/22 Recycle time was 5 sec.
The 580 EX at 24mm measured f/22 Recycle time was 5 sec.
The 580 EX at 105mm measured f/32.
So zooming the head on the 580 makes a difference of one stop. But where the real difference in terms of performance comes in to play is recycle time, at least for me. Additionally, the ability to remove the reflector and go "bare bulb" really makes a difference if you're using an umbrella. The light will fill the entire umbrella instead of hitting a smaller part of it like it does when using speedlights. This, of course, gives you much softer light.
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