Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Has anyone plugged a medium sized fan into a vagabond (either one)? I want to plug 2 Einsteins and a house-hold fan (for hair & wardrobe)? I want to use this setup on location and wonder if I need to buy a power generator or if the vagabond will get me through....

Thanks

It would depend on the power draw of the fan. VII can supply about 300 continuous Watts, and VML can supply about 120 continuous Watts. The fan is probably lower than either of these and should be OK. I would not run the fan off the same Vagabond that supplies power to the lights as it would decrease the number of shots per Vagabond charge. If you will have a spare Vagabond or like the weight aspect, the Vagabond will be fine to use for the fan. However, the fan does not require a pure sinewave inverter like the lights. This means you can use an inexpensive, off the shelf inverter from the auto parts or hardware store connected to a lawn mower battery to power the fan (but NOT the flash units).

Will this work?:

- VII
- 2 Einsteins
- Fan drawing 130 watts, 1.07 ampa (at highest setting)

If the VII will power this setup.... How many full power flashes could I get from the 2 Einsteins on full charge while running the fan?

Thanks

A fan is going to eat up battery power. I don't remember the specs for sure but I think the VII battery holds had around 120 watt-hours. That means the fan will drain the battery in about 1 hour. Once you start popping flashes the total run time + flashes will decrease considerably. Put another way, the fan draws about 1.7% of the VII's capacity every minute. The longer the fan runs the less pops you get.

Obviously, you can greatly decrease the fan's power consumption by only turning it on when needed. I'm not sure what your workflow looks like but you might be able to turn it on and shoot with the model for several minutes and then turn it back off.

How many pops with the fan going is not as straight forward as it sounds.... it is race to get pops in before the fan eats up all the power. How many pops will depend on how fast you are shooting.

Also, the fan will eat energy that would otherwise be used for charging the Einsteins, resulting in a longer recycle time.