How Much Power Do You Need?

A friend of mine recently bought some monolights. He bought them from one of those so-called "power-sellers" on Ebay. The lights are off-brand, very inexpensive, and manufactured, no doubt, in Hong Kong or some similar place.

Now don't get me wrong: I think there's a lot of useful stuff made in Hong Kong that is way cheaper, i.e., inexpensive, than the name brands of similar items. And these Hong Kong specials often get the job done perfectly well. My radio/wireless trigger system is a good example. The kit consists of a 4-channel transmitter that sits on the hot shoe with an extremely low profile and a reciever that takes four, "AA" batteries. It has a range of 100 feet and has never let me down. It cost me $39.95. I bought two sets. Compare that with the price of a Pocket Wizard. Sure, the PW has a range of 1600 feet, more discreet channels and other bells-and-whistles that are fairly impressive. A Pocket Wizard system, however, is (I think) around ten times the cost of my Hong Kong specials.

I don't know about any of you, but as a pretty girl shooter I've never found myself more than 100' away from my models-- certainly not in the studio. And I'm never competing with other shooters who are firing the same strobes and, potentially, creating frequency conflicts. I mean, what are these trigger systems? Technologically, they're glorified garage door openers when you come right down to it.

Back to my pal's new strobes.

Before he purchased them, he asked what I thought were the important qualities in a strobe. I told him recycle time, maintaining color temperature, recycle time, durability, a modeling light, and, uhh... recycle time.

"Not power?" he asked.

"How much power do you think you need?" I answered.

He then started on about watt-seconds and "more powerful is better" and all that. I reminded him he was going to be shooting female subjects and, because of that, he'd probably be modifying his lights, certainly his mainlight and also, if needed, the fill in order to make them soft. That would mean moving these lighting sources closer to the subject. I told him that, although the moderately high-power monolights he was going to purchase have the ability to adjust the output, he still might find, at a minimum, they put out too much power when moving them in fairly close with a soft-box or whatever. Plus, he might want to be shooting without too much depth-of-field and a lot of power might present some problems.

Fast forward...

He bought the lights and tried them out for the first time. He's relatively happy with them but, "Jeez!" he said. "I can't get the softbox in close enough without turning the strobe all the way down and it's still too much. I'm going to have to further dampen the light with some diffusion."

I then asked him what else he wasn't too thrilled with regarding his new lights.

"Recyle time." he said.

Nikita Lea is the power-model with this post. Niki's been seen in many magazines and is both a delight and a true pro in front of the camera.