The Paul C. Buff ‘Celestial’ Delivers a New Level of Creative Freedom
The closely anticipated Paul C. Buff Celestial Mild has given photographers who shoot on location and on the transfer a compact, dependable, and reasonably priced lighting resolution for his or her work.
Most photographers who’ve been within the business for a whereas are conversant in the Paul C. Buff line of lights. For years, they’ve been a staple for budget-friendly novices and professionals alike with the Alien Bee and Einstein techniques being discovered within the gear closet of nearly any inventive you meet.
Whereas the corporate has made transportable energy packs (Vagabond Mini), and even the Hyperlink with elective battery utilization to assist customers take their kits on the highway, it wasn’t till the launch of the Celestial that the model supplied one thing totally battery-powered that’s actually aggressive in each the ability, portability, and value.
What Does The Celestial Deliver To The Desk?
Paul C. Buff has been steadily including to its gentle choices with Digi-Bee and optionally-battery-powered Hyperlink techniques, however now with the 500-watt second Celestial strobe the corporate has added its first totally battery-powered gentle that may put out extra gentle than a Godox AD600Pro whereas coming in about two kilos lighter than each the aforementioned AD600Pro and the Elinchrom FIVE. This will not sound like a lot, however once you begin including a number of lights to your kits, each single ounce saved could make a enormous distinction.
The Celestial is an extremely various entry to the Paul C. Buff lineup presently accessible for creatives in search of highly effective instruments with a very consumer-friendly finances. The gentle can be utilized on location with about 200 full energy flashes (this amount will differ with modeling lamp use), accessible from a totally charged battery, (extra batteries can be found for simply $119.95) or within the studio on the identical battery energy and even plugged in to cost whereas in use. The transportable gentle additionally gives 12-stops of energy variability giving customers an excessive quantity of flexibility when adjusting their settings to mix nicely with the ambient and low-lit conditions.
Whereas Buff lists the Celestial’s full energy recycle at 1.5 seconds for the sake of consistency, in my testing it proved to be a lot sooner on a full battery and might even hit round 0.8 seconds. Regardless of the placement the sunshine is getting used, the Celestial gives customers entry to high-speed sync, TTL, motion, or colour mode that provides unimaginable colour consistency between pictures. What’s much more attention-grabbing is the motion mode accessible on the Celestial which supplies customers the flexibility to compress the flash into a shorter length, making it simpler to cease/freeze movement with out experiencing movement blurs that may occur when capturing motion utilizing strobes.
The Celestial can also be considerably extra reasonably priced than many of its rivals, making it a really perfect resolution for photographers who’re often on the transfer. Particularly should you want a number of lights to your setups. Creatives can stand up to 4 Celestial lights for about the associated fee of a single Profoto B10X Plus, releasing up their wallets to seize rather more dynamic lighting situations.
Along with all of the above options, Paul C. Buff gives its clients a level of support that many different producers can solely dream of, even going as far as inviting locals to fairly actually pop by and go to their showroom and see them in individual.
The Paul C. Buff Celestial: Compact & Sturdy
The Celestial could really feel prefer it has a acquainted physique design to some of the opposite lights in its household when it from the entrance. As you’ll discover, the brand new system makes use of an LED modeling lamp system to maintain it from getting too scorching whereas in use (do you have to depart the modeling lights on), and to make it simpler to get inventive by including or eradicating the magnetic inventive colour management gels and diffusion domes.
One thing else noticeable on this gentle is the addition of a giant deal with situated on the again facet of the gadget. This grip/deal with will make it a lot simpler for customers to make exact changes to their gentle positioning. Customers can also discover that the celestial nonetheless helps each one of the triggers beforehand utilized by Paul C. Buff (together with some Pocket Wizards) and in addition has the sensor alongside the highest to function as a slave unit with none points.
Either side of the sunshine have a latch for fast launch of the velocity ring for gentle modifier attachments like softboxes and optical snoots, and customers may also discover an LED display screen with a giant dial with a number of buttons for system setting modifications, navigation, and energy management.
Whereas customers can management and modify all the things they’d want from this interface, taking benefit of the brand new HUB and Buff Cell App for iPhone and Android gadgets will give them a lot sooner, simpler, and albeit, extra inventive management over the system.
Creative Colours Made Straightforward
Paul C. Buff has taken the fast gel utility sport a step additional with its magnetic colour gel dome system. The Gel Domes, designed to work on each the Hyperlink and Celestial lights, give creatives the flexibility to in a short time and simply add a contact of colour (and even colour correction) to their lighting setups. In solely seconds, customers can shortly add or swap out the rubber colour gel domes because of the tiny magnetic pins that snap proper onto the face plates of the Hyperlink and Celestial lights. They’re designed in such a method that they can be utilized with any Paul C Buff reflector, softbox, PLM umbrella, stripbox, magnificence dish, or octabox with out being in the best way or obstructed by the modifier.
The $64.95 Color Gel Dome equipment comes with a one-year guarantee and eight gels together with Yellow, Orange, Magenta, Blue, Teal, Inexperienced, Purple, and Purple. The $24.95 Color Correcting Gel Domes include the identical one-year guarantee and contains a Full CTO gel in addition to a Full Plus Inexperienced gel.
The Buff HUB And Cell App Brings It All Collectively
There isn’t a scarcity of triggers accessible to work with Paul C. Buff lighting options, nevertheless, the HUB provides customers one thing a little totally different that permits for a little extra inventive freedom. The hub options a hot-shoe mount on prime of the distant that offers customers the flexibility to attach their velocity lights for use in tandem with the Celestial gentle system, additionally giving full TTL high-speed sync performance.
The Hub itself provides customers entry to some restricted settings it could change together with enabling/disabling of Bluetooth for Smartphone connectivity, Heart Pin Triggering, the display screen brightness of the hub (decrease to save lots of battery life), enabling TTL or Guide flash modes, and setting the frequency and channel for the Hub from 1 to 16 respectively. Why so many of every? It is likely to be a tad bit of overkill, however via the Paul C. Buff Celestial system, you may theoretically have 16 photographers, every with as much as 16 lights, all capturing concurrently with HUB’s and apps with out interfering with another photographers setup.
At the moment, the HUB system natively helps Canon and Nikon, with Sony and Fujifilm help anticipated to reach this coming fall 2023.
To entry the total vary of settings and particulars accessible via the Celestial gentle, you’ll have to take benefit of the Buff mobile app (Out there on Android and iPhone gadgets) the place customers can entry each single element of the sunshine starting from the settings and depth of the modeling lamp, shoot modes (Motion/TTL/HSS), enabling/disabling the slave cell, establishing gentle configurations, and even accessing the total library of help movies and product particulars via the Paul C. Buff web site direct hyperlinks constructed into the app.
Diving into the “Setups” a little additional, utilizing this mode throughout the Buff app, creatives can label and pre-program their gentle setups for quick and straightforward modifications. As an example, as a headshot photographer, when you’ve positioned your lights and obtained the appropriate energy ranges for each, via the Setups part of the app it can save you the lights energy settings in order that the following time you utilize them you possibly can simply simply re-load that setup and be able to go immediately. Mainly, when you have a assortment of lights, you possibly can have them clearly labeled bodily and throughout the app so you possibly can simply load pre-set ranges for every gentle based mostly in your goto appears, making it an extremely steam-lined workflow, saving you a ton of time on set.
Why Is This A Huge Deal?
As talked about above, the Celestial system from Paul C. Buff gives customers a totally transportable and extremely highly effective 500W gentle system at a considerably decrease value and decrease weight than its competitors. For concerning the value of a single Profoto B10x Plus, Paul C. Buff customers can get 4 battery-powered lights to create some unimaginable and sophisticated photos. Throw within the added bonus of an extremely quick colour correction and artistic colour gel system and also you’ve obtained your self one thing extremely particular for novices and dealing professionals alike.
For photographers who like so as to add inventive colours to their work, the brand new magnetic colour domes from Paul C. Buff simply make issues extremely quick and straightforward to take care of each on set, and particularly on location. Utilizing conventional gel sheets with gaff tape or adapters which get in the best way of extra modifiers can get very very messy and even frustratingly sluggish generally to take care of, particularly when the opposite lights get too scorching and makes the tape fall off, and even worse, melts the gels instantly.
Not solely would this spoil the tempo of your shoot, it may even convey it to a crashing halt should you occur to truly destroy the colour gels you wanted to get the appropriate look and vibe of the challenge. Plus you’d be left with a ton of sticky residue over all of your modifiers and lightweight.
Leveraging the magnetic gel system will enable customers to shortly change the colours on the lights in addition to altering or adjusting the modifiers with out having to utterly untape and retape up the gels to a new setup.
Throughout our utilization of these lights, we have been capable of swap out the colours (and modifiers) in simply a few seconds as we didn’t must battle with bodily gentle domes that another gentle manufacturers have.
Beneath are a few different images I shot utilizing the Celestial:
The place Can You Discover Them?
The $649 Celestial Light and Accessories can be found now from the official Paul C. Buff retailer in addition to Amazon, Pixel Connection shops, and different third-party retail areas coming quickly. The Mild contains a magnetic diffusion dome, the delivery cowl, the battery, charger, and flash tube/gentle itself. Along with every unit coming with a 2-year manufacturing facility guarantee and a 30-day Absolute Satisfaction Assure, the corporate says that because of the rising success of the Celestial and substantial buyer suggestions, it can present free delivery on orders of $200 or extra.
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