rscheffler Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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That's interesting to know you can use the new Li-ion battery with the original packs. I have a couple of those with four A (action) heads and have used them fairly regularly since late 2009. I thought I read on the Elinchrom site when the lithium batteries were first released that it would be necessary to have the original heads upgraded for lithium battery compatibility... but it kind of didn't make sense that it would be the heads and not the packs that would need upgrading.
I'll second a lot of the comments favoring the Quadra system. Short flash duration available if you need it with the A/action heads, great exposure and color consistency and the super small and light heads are great for any situation where larger monolights would be problematic. But you will want to buy at least one or two extension cables in order to get heads far enough away from the pack(s). All of these points were reasons why I got into the system back then and moved away from AlienBee lights for most of my strobe work.
I've since replaced the original lead gel battery cells with locally sourced equivalents. It's pretty easy to take apart the housing to get at the cell for this DIY swap. Each cell cost about $25 CAD. On longer shoots I've definitely found the lead batteries lacking in capacity and endurance, but my solution was to acquire a couple Paul C Buff Vagabond Mini Lithium portable inverters instead of spending the money on the Elinchrom lithium packs (I can use the Vagabond Minis to power other things - I still have the AlienBees replaced by the Quadras for when I need 640W/s from a single head). You can use the Vagabond Mini to charge the Quadra while it's running. It's what I do now all the time, even for indoor shoots near power outlets, because it's just less cables lying around. I've disabled the auto power-off setting to keep the units on constantly and in turn they're constantly charged by the Vagabond Minis, which depending on the power and number of flashes, will last from a few hours to all day.
I was also happy to discover I could fit two packs each with a battery, four heads, seven cables, two chargers, two Vagabond Minis and other accessories in a Pelican 1440 roller case. It makes for a relatively portable rolling solution. Definitely a lot more compact than my previous monolights system. I wrote up a review, but here are a few photos to illustrate the layout. Since these photos were taken I've dropped the two extra lead batteries from the kit and instead bring two Vagabond Mini sets in their place. It literally gives me multiple hundreds of pops before I have to swap out the lithium batteries on longer shoots.
http://ronscheffler.com/samples/blogpix/pelican1440/20130307_0969.jpg
http://ronscheffler.com/samples/blogpix/pelican1440/20130307_0973.jpg
http://ronscheffler.com/samples/blogpix/pelican1440/20130307_0966.jpg
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