Smart Lighting
PROFOTO C1 AND C1 PLUS
Swedish professional flash company Profoto has cleverly re-invented itself to meet the changing demands of the lighting market, now bringing its expertise to the world of smartphone photography.
Back in 2014, Profoto created headlines when it launched the world’s first flash monobloc with TTL automatic exposure control. The batterypowered B1 brought a new level of convenience to using pro-level flash equipment on location, and Profoto has since launched a range of innovative lighting products with an emphasis on portability and flexibility. Now it’s gone even further and designed a professionallevel lighting system for smartphones.
Profoto’s C1 system represents the first studio lights for smartphones. There are two lighting units – the C1 and the C1 Plus – and they work in conjunction with Profoto’s new Camera Smart app. Operable as either a flash or a continuous light source, each C1 unit is exceptionally compact and round in shape in order to create beautiful, natural-looking light quality with a soft, gentle fall-off. They’re easy to move around to experiment with different lighting angles. Better still, the C1 Plus model is compatible with a range of light-shaping tools, including a dome diffuser, grids and colour gels and grids which, incidentally, are the same accessories as for the Profoto A1 and A1X on-camera flashes. They simply and quickly snap on and off via a magnetic mount. If you want to use a D-SLR or mirrorless camera instead, the C1 Plus is compatible with all Profoto’s AirTTL remote triggers. This means you can use several of them at the same time, and in combination with other Profoto lights. For convenience, a smartphone’s camera can be fired using a small white button on each of the C1 lights, making it easy to experiment with light painting and other creative techniques.
While they may be ultra-compact (and weigh just 176 grams), the C1 lights output 4300 lumens of flash light and 280 lumens of continuous light, with the colour temperature adjustable for either over a range of 3000 to 6500 degrees Kelvin. The built-in lithiumpolymer battery is good for 2000 full-power flashes or 40 minutes of continuous lighting at full power. Recharging is via USB-C and takes just two hours to full power
Profoto’s innovative C1 lighting system for smartphones brings professional-level lighting with enhanced flexibility and creativity to a whole range of new applications.
Are these the best prime lenses on the planet for D-SLRs or mirrorless cameras with full-35mm size sensors? Many glowing reviews and a large collection of design awards say ‘yes’.
Zeiss’s Batis lenses make optimal use of camera sensors, capturing every last detail with impressive contrast and high resolution. As well as offering fast and reliable autofocusing via linear motors, the Batis lenses also support manual focusing, allowing users to choose the best option for each individual situation. The sleek and modern external styling with smooth surfaces emphasises the superior quality of this lens family and gives each model an unmistakable look and feel. More practically, the barrels are sealed against the intrusion of dust or moisture.
A unique feature is an OLED-type display which provides a digital read-out of the focusing distance. Easy to read even in low light, these displays show the exact distance between the camera and the focal plane as well as the depth-of-field. The Batis lenses have a ‘floating element’ optical design which compensates for aberrations at different distance settings. They also all employ Zeiss’s advanced T* anti-reflective multi-coating to minimise ghosting and flare.
The Zeiss Batis 18mm f2.8 ultra-wide gives a diagonal angle-of-view of 99 degrees, and its Distagon retrofocus optical design employs 11 elements in ten groups, including four aspherical types and five with anomalous partial dispersion characteristics. These special elements ensure a high level of correction for distortion and the effective correction of optical aberrations, making this lens ideally suited to applications such as landscape, astrophotography and architectural photography.
The Zeiss Batis 25mm f2.0 wide-angle lens’s optical construction comprises ten elements in eight groups. This includes four double-sided aspherical elements and five made from special types of optical glass to ensure a consistently high image quality across the whole image field and a sharpness that extends right to the corners of the frame.
The Zeiss Batis 40mm f2.0 CF is a lightweight design with exceptional close-up focusing performance (‘CF’ stands for ‘Close Focusing’). The minimum focusing distance of 24 centimetres delivers a useful magnification reproduction ratio of 1:3.3. The nine-element construction includes aspherical and low dispersion types (including one which is both) to provide effective correction for distortion and optical aberrations. Weighing just 361 grams, the 40mm f2.0 CF perfectly complements the compact Sony A series mirrorless camera bodies.
The Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8 short telephoto has an 11-element optical construction in the Zeiss Sonnar design. These elements are made from various types of special glass designed to deliver superior image quality, including a high level of correction for chromatic aberrations.
This model incorporates optical image stabilisation to enable hand-held shooting in a wider selection of lighting situations.
The Zeiss Batis 135mm f2.8 employs an Apo-Sonnar optical design employing 14 elements in 11 groups – including eight with anomalous partial dispersion characteristics – to give a very high level of correction for chromatic aberrations. It incorporates optical image stabilisation to give extended low-light shooting capabilities without the need to resort to higher ISO settings. Its minimum focusing distance of 87 centimetres gives a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:5.3.
The shallow depth-of-field obtained at f2.8 with this focal length provides increased scope for exploiting the creativity of selective focusing.