Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I shut the power off at the Einstein last night (understanding that it really puts the light into standby mode) but forgot to power down the mini-lithium. This morning, the mini-lithium battery was dead. Is that normal?

Not terribly surprising, depending on how much battery was left at the end of the session, plus there is some draw from the light as well as energy loss from the inverter as well as how long "overnight" was.

The battery had just been charged and only a dozen or so half-power shots with a single E640. Overnight was about 12 hours.

12 hours is about the time it takes to drain a Vagabond battery in this scenario. Other inverter systems will drain faster. Th inverter itself will drain a battery from their own power consumption. This is not unique the Einstein of VML.

I have 6 or seven UPS systems in my house, and even those with nothing connected will be dead within a few hours of a power failure

At least you don't have to worry about sulfating the VML battery as you would with other (SLA) systems.

Thanks for the followup. It wasn't a complaint. I'm please with the mini. Just wanted to know if it is normal for the battery to drain completely under those circumstances.

Had you done this with most other systemes using SLA batteries, including Vagabond 1 or 2 or most computers, the battery would have died sooner and likely have been damaged beyond repair. With VML a 3 hour charge puts you back up and running, with no battery damage whatsoever.

A few have have automatic low voltage shut off features. But due to the high surge current of charging the flash, the battery voltage drops - by up to two volts when approaching low charge, and this dramatically reduces the number of pops available per charge.

The tiny VML supplies up to 550 640WS pops per charge from and AB 1600 at full 640WS - more than most SLA supplies costing a whole lot more. See Rob Galbraith's very complete overview at

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... 1314-11226

I did a little followup. With nothing plugged in, the mini didn't drain overnight. It must be the power consumed by the Einstein when plugged in, and in the stand-by mode, that drains the battery if you don't turn the power switch off on the mini.

The inverter alone will eventually drain the battery, but not as fast as it will with the Einsteins connected and in standby.