I have been told about this unit.. and seen a review of it.. has anyone here tried one?

http://lumopro.com/product.php?id=25

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vnVYw8P8Cw

Note, I want 2 Canon 580EX lls, but, omg, that is a THOUSAND DOLLARS!

I have never used one, but there are some strange specs on the 160 page.

Guide number: 140 (at ISO 100, feet) (Equivalent to Nikon SB-900 and Canon 580 EX II)

The Canon 580ex has a GN of 58 metres (the 430ex has a GN of 43 metres), 58 metres is about 190, not 140 feet.

I would imagine these are seconds, but no units are given
Full, t.5 : 1/1200, t.1 : 1/450
This you would generally expect given the decay curve at full power, t0.1 (the time taken for output to decay to a tenth of peak, about three stops) should be about three times t0.5 (the time taken for output to drop by half, or one stop). However...

1/64, t.5 : 1/27800. t.1 : 1/13150
This is very strange. After about 1/4 power, you would expect t0.1 to be approximately equal to t0.5, and here even at 1/64 power t0.1 is more than double t0.5.

I've been looking hard at this as well. They are pretty highly regarded by the guy over at Strobist.com. Manual flash isnt as hard to deal with as it would seem. I have a 580 and 430, which are nice in that they give ETTL capability, but the cost of those units has risen quite bit since I bought them.

I asked for the LP160 for Christmas. Hopefully I was a good boy this year.

-Brian

I have 300.00 left.. 300.00.
Sure would NOTwant to buy something that is useless or junk.
So, would have to rely upon pros to offer up their thoughts, advice, knowlege.

David Hobby likes the Lumopro LP160. Here's his review.

alaskalive wrote: I have 300.00 left.. 300.00. Sure would NOTwant to buy something that is useless or junk.

The LumoPros aren't useless, and aren't junk. No need to worry there.

The reason for the low price relative to Canon and Nikon Speedlites/Speedlights is because they are manual-power only, and so don't need autosensors, bidirectional communications, etc.

I'm still using Vivitar 285HVs to supplement my 580EX, but if I didn't already have them I'd look seriously at the LP160 myself. The $90 price of the Vivitar is nice, but the LP160 includes a built-in optical slave, has multiple sync jacks of various standards (the 285HV has a single jack that is a Vivitar-proprietary design), and other useful features.

I have two lp-160's. They work fine. If you use flash off-camera, they are all you need. If you use flash on-camera, they lack high speed sync, and ttl, but for many that's no big deal.

I really like how simple their user interface is: one button for power, one for zoom, that's it.

I used one in a camera trap, beat it up real good and it's still ticking.

Another big bonus is that they have built in optical triggers, plus a pc port and a miniphone port. Lots of options for triggering off-camera.

hugowolf wrote:
Guide number: 140 (at ISO 100, feet) (Equivalent to Nikon SB-900 and Canon 580 EX II)

The Canon 580ex has a GN of 58 metres (the 430ex has a GN of 43 metres), 58 metres is about 190, not 140 feet.

They probably mean it has equivalent power, not guide number, to an SB-900, etc. I guess most people with a LumoPro LP160 don't really care about the guide number.

A friend bought an LP160 recently. Looks interesting, but it's a bit hard to find in Europe. Price is great for a new flash with plenty of power. It's also a tad smaller in size than I expected, which is nice.

Edit: Rob Galbraith's take here.

Specularist wrote: They probably mean it has equivalent power, not guide number, to an SB-900, etc.

The Guide Number is the power.

You can specifiy flash power in watt-seconds, which is useful for strobes with interchangeable reflectors and such, but for flash guns with permanent built-in reflectors and fresnels the Guide Number is the standard measure of output intensity.

People buy the LumoPro LP160 to put it off-camera and use with additional modifiers, therefore joules (or watt-seconds, if you really must) are important. As Rob Galbraith states at the link I provided in my edited comment, the LP160 has similar power to the top Canon and Nikon speedlights.

If you want a guide number of 58 metres, I guess the LP160 isn't for you!

Specularist wrote: People buy the LumoPro LP160 to put it off-camera and use with additional modifiers, therefore joules (or watt-seconds, if you really must) are important.

Okay, then what is the joule rating of the LP160? Also, for comparison's sake, what is the joule rating of the Canon 580EX II and the Nikon SB-900?

Specularist wrote: ...As Rob Galbraith states at the link I provided in my edited comment, the LP160 has similar power to the top Canon and Nikon speedlights.

And how did he determine that? Did he disassemble them and measure the joules of the capacitors' output? No. He measured the light intensity.

My only point is that the guide numbers can be misleading if read casually, because they depend on several factors beyond flash energy output. This is no doubt obvious to you, but it might not be obvious to everyone.

For example, for the SB-900, Nikon states:

"The SB-900 guide numbers differ depending on the camera's image area, illumination pattern, ISO sensitivity, zoom position and flash output levels."

Only the last variable (flash output level) is "power" as we normally think about it. If you dig deeper you'll see Canon's stated guide number of 58 metres at ISO 100 for the 580EX II (quoted earlier in the thread) is specified with the built-in reflector zoomed to the 105 mm position. Nikon's stated guide number of 34 metres at ISO 100 for the SB-900 is for the head zoomed to the 35 mm position, on an FX camera, with the standard illumination pattern selected. Therefore we can't directly compare the guide numbers of 58 metres and 34 metres, in this case.

By extension, we might not be able to compare the LP160's guide number to the others.

Incidentally, a more direct comparison between the 580EX II and SB-900 can be found in their respective user manuals. The Canon has a guide number of 28 metres at its 24 mm zoom position, which compares to 27 metres at 24 mm for the Nikon with the standard illumination pattern (with other illumination patterns it's a bit more or less).

alaskalive wrote:
I have 300.00 left.. 300.00.
Sure would NOTwant to buy something that is useless or junk.
So, would have to rely upon pros to offer up their thoughts, advice, knowlege.

Tell us more about how you intend to use them. If you are planning to use them for traditional portrait photography, I'm not sure speedlights are the best way to go.

The obstacle is the lack of modeling lights. Some lighting patterns, such as Rembrandt, require very precise positioning of the key light to produce the proper pattern. It is very difficult to do if you don't have modeling lights to assist.

For years I used a classic Photogenic setup with a powerpack and heads with proportional modeling lights. This was in the film days when instant feedback was not available. Chimping or tethering now allows you to see results immediately, but when you're working with portrait subjects, the adjust-view-adjust cycle can stand in the way of communicating with your subject.

What are your plans? Is this a fun undertaking or are you trying to market your work? Unfortunately, I don't think you can do proper traditional portraiture on the cheap.