New Toy - Strobeam DL4 Portable Flash

I've been a Strobist for quite a few years. It is one of the best thing I have done in Photography. In conjunction with joining The London Strobist Meetup group on Flickr in 2009, my portrait photography has come a long way since those early days.


In the early days before discovering off camera flash with Strobist I had a Portaflash kit from Jessops. It was a good kit to get started and I learned the lighting basic with it. The only thing is, it is not much more powerful than portable flash guns and require mains power, so not suitable for location shooting without power. For the last few years, I have been using a combination of Nikon SB26, SB28, Canon 540EZ, 550EX and 430EX as my off camera kit. Used with various light modifiers, I am very happy with the results I get within their limitations. The biggest issue with these portable flash guns is the lack of power. This shows up in bright ambient condition, when you are restricted to 1/250s X-Sync shutter speed and has to stop down to small aperture like F11. I had to set the power of these portable flashes at full power without modifier. This cause problem with heat build up in the flash and long recycle time.


I've been toying with the idea of buying portable flash for a while but never happy to pay the cost. I am aware of Strobeam DL4 for over a year, but it still cost £670. I have seen it been used by other togs and they were easily overcoming bright sunlight with a large softbox. Last week, I saw it on eBay for £455 + £10 shipping. I thought about it for a few days and after asking some questions I ordered it and received it within a day. I unpacked it and charged the battery and did a few test fire.  Here is what you get from the package. It comes with a carry case which is handy.  The battery charger is not shown here.

It comes with an adaptor so I can use my Bowens softbox with it. The head feel quite well made, but I have not used it in a real photo shoot yet.  The battery took 4 hours to charge and is very small.  I will add report on its performance once I have done a couple of photo shoots. Here are a couple of photos of it mounted on my boom arm.

The connection to the side is the power lead from battery and the cable at the back is the sync cable.  It can be triggered optically with the little white switch to the right.