More power, greater control

The latest technology delivers serious power with wide-ranging control

Tenabling the full charge of the capacitors to be deployed. A bonus is the addition of auto TTL (through the lens) flash metering, which becomes available if you buy an optional Nikon-dedicated wireless trigger.

The stamina of the battery-powered flash heads in this test group depends greatly on the output power you’re using. For example, when driving a single Elinchrom ELB 500 TTL head at its minimum power setting, the power-pack will last for as many as 28,000 flashes before it needs recharging. Turn up the wick to maximum output power, and the battery will run flat after about 400 flashes.

The Honey Badger Unleashed batterypowered head has the stamina for 430 full-power flashes, although it only has half the max power rating of the Elinchrom, whereas it’s a more modest 200 flashes for the Profoto B10 Plus, which has the same max power rating as the Elinchrom. You can also run the Elinchrom and Profoto heads direct from the mains, where available.

Some prefer constant lighting to flash, not only as a necessity when shooting video, but also for portrait and close-up stills. The ‘what you see is what you get’ approach takes the guesswork out of balancing flash with available light, but the max power output is weak compared with a flash head. Constant lamps often used to use halogen bulbs, which ran horrendously hot, but there’s been an LED revolution in recent times. For constant lighting, ultrabright LEDS laid out across a rectangular or circular panel are the way forward.