Profoto just announced their new 500 Ws studio strobe, the D30. I've been playing with it for the last few weeks, and today I am finally able to share with you a full photoshoot using this powerful light. If you are like me, most of your work is done out on location.
This means that I usually go for battery-powered strobes and carry a backpack full of spare batteries. But every now and then, I'm forced to shoot a ton of images in a relatively quick period of time for catalog or e-commerce-style productions. These situations often require me to work both in the studio or out on location, and they almost always demand a ton of shooting back-to-back-to-back.
I'm not talking about 300 images and a break; sometimes it's 3,000 images and a break. This is where an AC-powered flash like the comes in handy. Unlike battery-powered strobes that might last you an hour or two of full-power shooting, and sometimes struggle to recycle, an AC-powered flash can go all day with no adjustments and no missed or underexposed flash pops.
So when Profoto shared this new flash with me to test and create some images, I knew this wasn't going to be a flash I'd use for simple outdoor portrait sessions. This is a flash made for demanding situations where you need to fire at full power over and over again. From what I gather, the D30 is more or less a replacement for .
Unlike the (hence the "B") and are designed to be as light as possible, the D series is more robust and can mount much larger light modif.