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Enrike Garcia's picture

Strobes lighting recommendations

I Currently I want to buy Strobe Lighting,
I have a budget of $ 2500
I want something that I can use for some time.
And have some light modifiers and can be used in field without being connected to a wall,
Any recommendations?

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5 Comments

Check out Paul C Buff, they make pretty solid gear especially for the price, if you only want one strobe i would buy the Profoto B1 though

Enrike,
I agree with Pat. Check out the Paul C. Buff line of products. The Einstein or Alien Bees line. I have used Alien Bees lights for 12+ years and never had a problem. Very affordable and a great company to work with.
Include a good light meter in your budget.
John

First I HIGHLY recommend starting with one light an umbrella a stand and maybe some grids. You can do soooo much with that and get good at lighting and then you will know what gear you need and can buy that.

Do NOT buy a huge lighting kit with four lights and tons of accessories. It will be overwhelming and half the items in the kit you will never use because they aren't needed for your lighting style

And I also recommend Paul buff / alien bees. Prices are good and the stuff lasts forever. My first light is still working after 10 years of use

I just bought two PC Buff Einstein 640's with Vagabond battery packs, a beauty dish, reflector and Octobox for US$2000. This allows expansion without buying more batteries as you can plug two into each while keeping decent recycling times.

With these two lights and an off-camera speedlight or two, you can do just about anything, from bounce lighting an entire church/hall to complicated outdoor modelling shoots and even high-speed liquid and splash photography with the super short flash durations.

The other options open to you would be the Elinchrom rangers ($1000 each with batteries and great modifier range) and Profoto B1 or B2. (Built in battery/great build quality)

The Einsteins are the highest powered and lowest flash duration and after sales service is notoriously excellent. But, they do break and you will be sending them back for repairs at some stage which is annoying even if it is cheap. They are also the hardest of these three to lug around due to weight and poor stand clamp design on battery pack.

The profoto B1 is the choice if you are thinking of expanding later and want the best quality straight off the bat. You could grab a couple of yongnuo 560's ($60 each) with rf603 ($25) to give you extra light sources for cheap while you save for another B1 (their $2000 each).

The profoto B2 is in your price range for a 2 light kit but at 250ws it is a little underpowered depending on what you want it for.

The Elinchrom rangers are being superceded by the ELB 400 which will be $3200 for a 2 light kit, but the rangers are still a solid system.

Good luck!