Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I just moved into a new studio and in setting up my background lights decided the easiest way to mount them might be upside down. I come from the video world where this is a VERY bad idea as the lights will overheat, but the bees have ventilation all around the body and do not get nearly as hot as my video lights.

Will I be able to get away with this is or is it just a bad idea. I have two 800's hanging from the ceiling currently. I'd like to keep them there, but not at the risk of overheating them. Thanks.

You should not have any issues hanging them upside down.

Thanks for the help. Am loving the lights!

My bees (2), X1600's (5) Einstiens (3) are all upside down. No problems what so ever

All that's missing is a function to flip the Einstein LCD display 180 degrees so it reads correctly when the flash is flipped. Perhaps an idea for inclusion in a future firmware upgrade.

To automatically do this would also require a hardware addition as well, that being an accelerometer. Part of the soul of the new generation of our lights is Cyber Commander, which would make the orientation irrelevant.

The CyberCommander isn't mandatory, but it is so incredibly useful and puts the system on an operability plane so far above everything else that it should be considered nearly so. Nobody who shoots without assistants should be shooting without CyberCommander.

I don't think he was suggesting an automatic (accelerometer-triggered) flip, just a menu function to be added to firmware to flip it manually if desired. That seems like a reasonable thing to put on the wish list. I realize it is a corner case, but the dang slave eye is implemented for the corner cases as a default! :-)

It need not be done automatically with an accelerometer. A manual menu option sould suffice. (As for me, I don't hang my lights, so it's moot.)