Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

A little info. - I have 2 WL Ultra 1800’s 1 has bad tubes in it. I want to start taking in studio portrait photos. The area where I will be taking these is to small to use the 1800's even at the lowest setting.
I know that I should buy a couple of smaller strobes but that is not an option at this time.
I put 1 of the good tubes in the head with the bad tubes in order to verify that the tubes where in fact the problem, which was the case. I set up my lights the way i wanted and noticed that with 1 tube in each head I was able to get the lighting that I need.

My question is, am I going to hurt the 1800's by using them with only 1 good tube?

Thank you in advance for any help.

You should not have any problems with short term usage. Long term, if you only used one side, would cause the other side (by which I mean one of two banks of flash capacitors) to deteriorate from disuse.

So I will just have to remember to switch the tubes around every now and then.
Thank you, I feel better now.