High power light packs 2000ws and above...

[BrendanStewart]

I have an honest question.... with my Hasselblad H3DII and Ranger RX AS at 1100ws i really have all the lighting control i could ask for, including making daytime look like nightime.

So i'm sitting here scratching my head.... some heads are rated for 2400ws or above. In what scenario and what gear are people using that much power? I'm dying to know...

Hell, when i set my Hassy to F32 and 1/800th i can still barely handle 1000ws. You would need some serious ND filtering to cut down 2400ws.  Is it large format folks that can use that much power? Or are there some use cases which i'm simply not thinking of...

TIA.

[FredBGG]

A lot depends on what light sharpers you are using as well as how you like to light.

Some photographers prefer the falloff you get with lights quite far from the subject.

If you are shooting two people for example ... with one closer to the camera and the other further away.
IF your lights are too close the closer subject will be to bright compared to the other one further away.

I use heads with up to 6.000 w/s. These are heads with twin tubes and I particularly like the Elinchrom
crossed over or "roller coaster" twin tube head. The tubes are crossed so they produce a single edged shadow instead of nasty double
edge shadows.

I also use Leko lights for very very crisp shadows. I made my own custom ones with quite small final lenses.
At 6,000 w/s I get f 11 for a full length shot.... but the crisp light is the cleanest I have been able to achieve.

Here is what the head looks like:






Also if your shooting film with an ISO of 25 or alternative processes with an ISO of 2 to 6
power comes in handy.

I am doing a series of portraits shooting 8x10 direct to paper with an ISO of 6
and my Schneider 480mm F8.4. 6,000 w/s flying through this gem (see below)
is a blessing.





Here is what comes out of the SL35....





It also makes a rather nice deep boompff sound rather than the sharp crack sound of a head in something else.

[Frank Doorhof]

Start feathering The light and output is dropping like crazy.
Also as mentioned the modifier, for example strips eat power.

With a maxilight and ranger you will have A LOT of power, now change the maxilight for a chimera strip pro and the output is several stops lower.

Also realize that a 1100ws unit only gives you ONE stop less than a 2200ws unit.

[donaldt]

well
when shooting large format, you would be looking at f32 or f64 or smaller
and with some kind of modifier you could lose up to two steps of lights
2400ws less two steps is 600ws
at 1200ws to 600ws 10ft you get what? f11 to f8 at ISO100?
so is there a use for it? yes, thats why there is the 6400ws twin head for you need to light up the white house at night
do I need it? no

[HarperPhotos]

Hello,

When it comes to shooting car interiors I have used up to 6 Bowens 3000 watt generators all at full power.

Cheers

Simon

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Does 1100W/s give about 6,600 lux at 1m (30 degree beam) if it's rated at 50 lm/W? I'm not sure.

In comparison, an HMI rated 18K gives me about 1.5 million lux at that distance. And I need a couple of those crashing down through diffusion and windows to simulate daylight on a film set. The actual sun at high noon is about 100,000 lux. The HMI 18K gives me about 15,000 lux at 30 feet. Big windows? I'll need at least four.

The point is: somebody needs it enough times that companies are willing to manufacture them in large numbers.

[BrendanStewart]

Hello,

When it comes to shooting car interiors I have used up to 6 Bowens 3000 watt generators all at full power.

Cheers

Simon

ok your scenario is exactly what i'm talking about, what camera are you shooting and what modifiers are on those lights?

[LenR]

I have a Sinar/Bron studio that is over twenty four years old.  When I shot 8x10 still life I frequently programed the packs for multiple pops to get the correct exposure.  With people (and a lack of bellows extension) one pop was fine.
I installed a leaf DCB in 1991 and everything could be shot with one pop and it's been that way since (currently using an Aptus).  There is plenty of wiggle room up and down when using the Brons.
About 3 years ago I got a Nikon system with fast lenses and there's almost no way I can use the Bron lighting when shooting wide open so I bought some Elinchrom heads thinking their power would be low enough. It's still hard to shoot wide open with the kind of quality the Brons have. 
In conclusion it's gone from 20,000 ws being too little to 20 ws being too much!
Go figure:) 

[Gandalf]

Lighting and pack power is such a complicated subject. If I am lighting something small, I probably don't need a lot of pack power -- especially if it doesn't move. If I am lighting something large, say a house or the grounds around it, there is no such thing as too much. During a shoot last week we needed to light the grounds around a house to make it look like a sunny afternoon and not like a storm was rolling in. Later that day we had eight heads connected to five packs to shoot one room because there were a lot of little areas that needed to be lit. Shooting models in a studio (or outside) you want a lot of power for fast recycle times (a 500j pack takes about 2.5 seconds to recycle, but the same 500j output takes 1 second on a 1000j pack and about a half second on a 2000j pack).

Lighting moving objects is another area where you may need high power to light a large area or carry a long distance, or a lot of power so you can run the pack at a low output for a fast duration. Some people use a bitube head for more power, some for shorter duration.

Also, you need to think about ambient light. You have a top shutter sync speed of 1/800. Shooting in a situation where you have to overpower the sun, someone with a top sync speed of 1/125 will need approximately three times the strobe power that you need. On that note, the type of camera you are shooting and the ISO available make a big difference. I have a DSLR that I don't like to shoot below 1/320 unless I have to, which means I don't need a lot of pack power -- one or two 500j monolights and a reflector or two go a very long way. Conversely, I remember one studio shoot with a 4x5 where we were using seven pops of a 2000j pack and five pops of a 2400j pack per exposure to get the look we needed.

[BrendanStewart]

The reason i brought up the question was when i was shooting at f32, the Ranger RX AS pack was overpowering the camera setup i had. H3DII-31 with 35-90 lens. So even if i went up to F64 (Which i can't with that lens) but even you large format folks, f64 is below 2400ws. Now if you added a modifier that knocks a stop or two down into the mix, then i could see where it comes into play.

Thanks for clearing that up. I just can't imagine having that much power, if you hold the line on the Ranger pack at 1100ws you can feel the electricity in the line. I can't imagine what 3000ws must feel like.

[Frank Doorhof]

I remember your face when you held the strobe

Do remember that the maxi light gives you roughly 2 stops more than a normal small reflector and 3-4 more than most soft boxes. And every stop is double the watts.

Also distance plays.
So with cars when lights are further away 1100 ws will be on the low side.

[Stefan.Steib]

Brendan

I still have (and sometimes fire them so they keep working) 2 x Hensel HT8000 Generators and 2 x HT4000.
This is the rest of my former studio where I had twice as much and used them regularly full power - this was:
8x10 " closeup shots, with Velvia/50ASA on Aporonars 480 and 600 at F64 even F90, sometimes with Polarizing filters - I even needed to darken and do multiexposures.
Subjects : e.g. Black plexi reflections with colors on heads, indirect Plexi and glass shots and outside - of course industry, large stuff.

For digital this is either overkill, or the customers who used to pay for this are bankrupt, or you can do it with some photoshopping and save a lot of power using
several shots. thus not needing this extreme depth of field.

Yes the good old days. Where I worked before being on my own we used High Voltage devices made by german company Horst Musch, blasting out 16000 watt seconds.

you could feel it fire when you took the cable into your hand and folded it- so strong the induction was it moved a bit !

Greetings from Germany
Stefan

[BrendanStewart]

Brendan

I still have (and sometimes fire them so they keep working) 2 x Hensel HT8000 Generators and 2 x HT4000.
This is the rest of my former studio where I had twice as much and used them regularly full power - this was:
8x10 " closeup shots, with Velvia/50ASA on Aporonars 480 and 600 at F64 even F90, sometimes with Polarizing filters - I even needed to darken and do multiexposures.
Subjects : e.g. Black plexi reflections with colors on heads, indirect Plexi and glass shots and outside - of course industry, large stuff.

For digital this is either overkill, or the customers who used to pay for this are bankrupt, or you can do it with some photoshopping and save a lot of power using
several shots. thus not needing this extreme depth of field.

Yes the good old days. Where I worked before being on my own we used High Voltage devices made by german company Horst Musch, blasting out 16000 watt seconds.

you could feel it fire when you took the cable into your hand and folded it- so strong the induction was it moved a bit !

Greetings from Germany
Stefan

Thanks for the reply. Those days sounded quite interesting. I figured large format was where it was used, just was wondering if there were any other applications.  16000w/s sounds very scary. Probably had to mount the lights tight so that they didn't come undone.

[BrendanStewart]

I remember your face when you held the strobe

Do remember that the maxi light gives you roughly 2 stops more than a normal small reflector and 3-4 more than most soft boxes. And every stop is double the watts.

Also distance plays.
So with cars when lights are further away 1100 ws will be on the low side.

Oh yeah... i'll never forget my reaction when holding the cable!

But that's what I couldn't wrap my head around, if you have so much distance, then you are creating a small light source, or at least a medium one. But with the scrims and such, i could see how that could be useful. Especially with higher f stops, like 1/32 and 1/64.

[LKaven]

I also use Leko lights for very very crisp shadows. I made my own custom ones with quite small final lenses.
At 6,000 w/s I get f 11 for a full length shot.... but the crisp light is the cleanest I have been able to achieve.

Very nice!  Thanks for stopping in with that.

[locpham]

Has anyone here used the old Ascor Strobes?  They had some serious power.

[K.C.]

Has anyone here used the old Ascor Strobes?  They had some serious power.

Each pack was relatively lower power but you could combine them for up to 40,000WS into a single head at 1/5000 duration.

I worked in a studio that was still using them in the mid-80s. They were discontinued because they had PCBs. So there were a couple of ways they could kill you.