Hi folks;

I'm the possessor of some aging Bowens 500 Esprit monoblocs (they're about 17 - 18 years old) and while they've done some great service in the past, it's time to upgrade. The monoblocs aren't location-friendly, and with a lot of my work done on location, speedlights just don't quite do what I need. Obviously I've got a lot of Bowens-mount softboxes, etc. I'm aware of the TravelPak range of gear, but if the right combination of equipment was available, I'm not against changing to another brand.

What do I need? Something that can...
- power one or two heads on location for between 100 and 150 flashes;
- be reliable;
- be able to be triggered remotely;
- have a reasonable range of light shapers (or adapters for other light shapers);
- be reasonably portable if it had to be carried, say 500 metres on foot.

Just after general thoughts. I'm scratching around trying to find out information, and I thought I'd throw the question open for anyone who might want to comment.

Cheers,

- Warren B.

look at a used elinchrom quadra on ebay. From my experience, it meets your stated requirements. Elinchrom just came out with a slightly better one so the gear whores are unloading them in favor of the new model. With an adaptor, it works will all elinchrom modifiers which are fantastic but expensive, and third party modifiers like pcb, fotodiox, etc. A full setup with two batteries, two heads and cables weighs 6 lbs.

Cheers,
Noah

Cheers mate! I wasn't aware that there were a few older ones hitting the market. I'll check it out.

Godox equipment offers 2 paths


Wistro series portable flash units             (sometimes private labeled)
http://www.godox.com/EN/Products_Witstro_Flash.html
http://www.godox.com/EN/Products_Camera … Flash.html

or

Power pack
http://www.godox.com/EN/Products_Portab … P800x.html
&  Strobes   combination    (most of which use Bowens mount modifiers)
http://www.godox.com/EN/Products_Studio_Flash.html


all can be shipped to AUS  via dealers on Ebay,  Amazon or Aliexpress.com


GODOX AD360
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TIvuAT4wlA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFZXokNyW0s

REVIEW: Godox LP-800X Portable Battery Pack
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ugs … ack_school

Budget?

I've been a broken record on the board about how great the Flashpoint Streaklight 360's are - they're $320, often on sale for even less, with the power pack. This is Adorama's rebrand of the Godox Witstro AD360, which you can read about here.

A $20 adapter/umbrella mount gets you a Bowens S mount, and a $22 speedring gets you Chimera compatibility. $75ish gets you a pair of YN622 triggers that allow you to sync these at 1/8000.

I have and shoot with two of them. You can do, e.g. 1/8th key light into a Photek; 1/32nd fill - ISO400, f/10, 1/160th - full coverage. At 1/8th and below they recycle instantly. At 1/1 you get something like 450 shots per charge, so in the previous configuration you'll get 3,500 shots from your key, 14,400 shots from your fill   

In blunt terms, they are 4x the output of a speedlight at like 1.5x the size/weight.

If you need more power, you go to this dude for between $550 and $750.

Michael, Jim;

Thank you both very much, this looks pretty much the direction I may need to go. I wasn't aware of some of these options, so my very sincere thanks for the information. I am not worthy...