Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Waffle House, pasties and coffee . . . but not much at a time, plus cigarettes . . . all that stuff that's supposed to kill you. ! I keep my weight below 155 . . . but I'm only 5'7".

Well, that explains a lot. It's the sugar nicotine combination that probably accounts for the powerful intellect. Starting right now, I'm giving up brocolli and asparagus for the waffles and donuts.

Ken R.

When I entered the world of photography, I never expected to find so many jerks, attitudes, and arrogance on the forums. I hope that these people don't behave in the same fashion face-to-face. However it is no excuse for the behavior that I see. You have no reason to tolerate it, and getting banned from that site is likely a blessing.

You have to remember there are only about a dozen of these jerks on FM . . . Plus Fred Morondo himself supporting them in deference to the 1000 decent regulars who simply tune this crap out. Notice he locked the thread so differing opinions could not be expressed. It's the same on DP Review and I got the same result there trying to share info members were asking for.

I still look at FM daily and, big surprise . . . the posts on the lighting section are down about 80% since Morondo made this decision. Look up his profile picture . . . a typical Hollywood gold chain Mercedes type . . . the type of person that drove me out of Hollywood and into the real world of middle America almost 40 years ago.

Of interest to this thread. Shooting a picture of Einstein with Einstein's by a real pro.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1004410

As usual, great instruction by Alex and excellent work. His enthusiasm apparent in his tutorial videos is rather infectious. I anticipate that the thread will go off topic very quickly, judging by the first few replies.

While I much prefer vBulletin forums due to my familiarity with them, POTN for example, one of the reasons I started reading the FM forums is because I noticed a generally higher level of knowledge among the members. In particular, I would often search for Chuck Gardner's posts and read them when I had some time. The most recent thread that Chuck participated in, roughly 7 weeks ago, contains posts with antagonistic remarks directed at him. I don't think he's posted since. Perhaps he's away for vacation or some other simple reason, but I wouldn't be surprised if Chuck has abandoned the FM forums because of the abuse.

I think you'll find the same hateful language on FM topics that involve Paul C. Buff whether I'm there or not. Many of theses hate mongers likely work for photo resellers or have an association with competitors. Retailers all hate me because they can't sell our products . . . that's a long standing given. I believe we sell more monolights and associated accessories than all retail outlets in the US combined, and have for 20 years. That breeds a lot of jealousy.

happy belated birthday Paul!

really happy with your products.

The einstein has been fantastic and the cybersynces/cyber commanders have been amazing

Keep up the good work, I appreciate it alot

Here's a good example of what happens on FM.

In the link and post below in blue, the responding poster rattles off a bunch of specs for various lights without knowing or specifying the important parameters of flash duration, change in color temperature or range of power control. He mentions color temperature shift for Bowens only, and "Voltage Stabilization" only on the other lights.

If I in the past weighed in on a post like this with real and complete performance specs I was immediately attacked by the usual haters. Fred protects his small herd of haters so the truth is shut out because of poor forum management and flaming biases on the part of the moderator and a dozen or so reliable haters.

So here is the accurate answer to the below post:

Every light listed, as well as AB and WL produce about 80°K color shift per f stop of power adjustment, so all perform the same in this regard as the "+/- 300°K" stated for Bowens.

Every light listed produce similar or slower flash durations to AB/WL, and all produce longer durations as power is lowered. Typical range of t.1 flash durations of these lights is from 1/200 to 1/600 second depending on the brand and power settings.

The myth is common suggesting "Buy an expensive Euro light for faster flash duration and better color consistency" This is blatantly false.

Profoto often comes up as the gold standard, when in fact Profoto color shift and flash durations are among the worst. For example, the popular Compact series had very limited power range and higher color shift VS power setting than AB and extremely slow flash durations. It's replacement D1 series improves the flash durations, but is fully 800°K higher in color temperature the the Compact. The D1 color shift VS power setting is higher than that of AB, and the D1 no longer has bare bulb capability, so is marginalized in softbox or PLM use. For a few hundred dollars extra you can but a diffusing dome. Problem is, the placement of the lamps within the diffusion dome still cannot result in the true bare-bulb performance of Einstein, or even AB so performance is still marginal.

Lastly, the singular lighting system on the market that comes close to matching Einstein in terms of flash duration, color consistency and power adjustment range and consistency are the IGBT controlled Broncolor packs (Grafit and Scoro) that cost in the $10,000 and up range. These systems can achieve t.1 durations as fast as 1/6000 to 1/8000 second, while einstein can yield 1/13,500 second. Both the Broncolor IGBT packs and Einstein can produce constant color over the entire power range, while none of the other lights listed can produce constant, consistent color over the power range.

As for the Elinchrom RX 600, it is essentially an exact functional equivalent, in every parameter mentioned above, as an AB1600, differing only with the inclusion of digital (albeit cumbersome) controls and a $900 or so price VS AB1600's $360 price.


http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1004585
pentool wrote:
here are some things i'm looking at in a strobe. more consistent light output. have about equal power output as my B800, and B1600. being able to sync faster then 1/250th. and if possible dial it at very low outputs. and obviously good light modifiers.

im looking at elichromes because of their light modifiers. but im not sure which line to look at. how about the einsteins? thanks in advance!

Your B800 and 1600 don't have consistant light output? Could you describe more detail?

I ask as there are hords of folks that use and recommend these lights.

As a reference, here's what some more expensive brands/models specify:
Bowens 500Pro: 5600K ±300K (+/- 5%)
Broncolor Minicom 80 Voltage Stabilization: +/- 1.5%
Einstein: +/- 50K (0.009%)
Elinchrom Digital Style 600RX 600 Watt/Second Monolight (120VAC): Voltage Stabilization: +/- 1%
Hensel Integra 1000 Watt/Second Monolight (115V AC) Voltage Stabilization: +/- 0.5%
Norman ML600R Monolight (#810653): Voltage Stabilization: +/- 1%
Photogenic Radio Powerlight 2500DR Voltage Stabilization: +/- 0.05%
Visatec Logos 1600 RFS 600 Voltage Stabilization: +/- 1%

Here's another example of the FM haters group.

Another poster that has no idea of what he is talking about is now trolling this forum for libelous posts he can try to use against Buff products, and I am blocked from responding. So I'll respond here.

First . . . the comment about isolation transformers: To my knowledge, isolation transformers have not been used in any studio flash for the past 40 years. They serve no purpose nor to they increase safety. As I said before, most monoflash units globally are primarily derived from our 1986 WL Ultra series.

As to the comments about reliability . . . indeed, I conducted a serious and accurate study of AB sales over the past 10 years to AB repairs. As I recall the repair to sales ratio was 0.8% per unit per year. That means if you own 125 ABs you will likely have to have one of the repaired per year. (some customers own several hundred, and even thousands). When you have about 300,000 ABs in the field and 2400 of them fail every year that's ripe picking for purveyors of demeaning information.

Finally, regarding VML and the comment about super gluing the AC connector. Of about 3500 VMLs shipped since January, one battery failed because the customer let it get filled with sea water, no inverters have failed, and one customer reported an AC outlet that pulled out of the unit. I told the customer we would be happy to replace the unit, but if he preferred to not exchange it right now, the likely cause was a mis-manufactured snap tab on the connector and that he could probably temporarily rectify the situation by applying super glue.

So two problems in 3500 units represents a 4 month failure rate of 0.057%. Annualized to one year mean time between failures (MTBF) this calculates to 0.17% per year. This comes down to 0.086% if you exclude user misuse failures.

The industry average one year failure rate is documented to be between 3% and 8% for the gamut of electronic products.

So, was it my presence on FM that causes the problem of a dozen haters out of thousands of serious poster? Or is it that certain people just get a thrill out of attacking everyone and anyone, and Fred Morondo always sides with the dirty dozen instead of his larger community of members? Hey Fred, it's your forum . . . go ahead and destroy it.




http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1004585

Another example of people drinking the kool-aid.

I have not seen how the Einstein is put together but his bees are actually designed poorly and I really dont know how there aren't more problems with them then it seems.

From the pictures I have seen of a bee taken apart it is missing simple basic components that you would find in other lights. The big example is an isolation transformer. Now I love how Paul will sit there and tell you that he has 1% of 1% failure rates blah blah blah but if you actually look around and read how many people have problems with the bees, VML, and everything else, you will see that we are being poured the kool-aid and everyone is drinking it. Their biggest flaw is not working the bugs out before it is released. Einsteins, PLM's, and just about anything else has had its flaws that could of been worked out with a little more testing. If you read his "FORUMS" board and listen to the help he gives people, it is just crazy! A guy had the outlets fall out of his VML and paul told him to super glue it in.... WHHHHAAAAAATTTTT? Are you kidding me? Super Glue? How about replace it. He should let his people, that he hires, to do his work, NOT HIM. He is a very passionate person about his wares and he SHOULD be but he looks like a giant ass when someone posts something about his stuff and he just jumps all over them. I personally own a Alien Bee ring light and think it is sub-standard but it is still cheaper than the next ring light out there. I use all photogenics and they are not the best of the best either but but they are more consistant than what I have seen the alien bees do.