One Of These, Please....The Profoto B10

Okay, let's cut to the punchline straight away. I want one of these. If you are a photographer who shoots weddings, shows, portraits, fashion, or editorial, you want one - or two - as well. Stefan Gosatti does all these things and he's just had a chance to test out the new Profoto B10 over the last few days. He's rapt with them, his pictures prove that they work like a locomotive, and he's spending some of his own money to buy some. He showed us how it all works last night at the Northbridge Hotel - courtesy of Camera Electronic and CR Kennedy. The unit has the classic Profoto mount and controls in a body the size of a large soup can. The style has the sort of Scandinavian slickness that we used to see with B&O and Sonab. There's a classic Profoto glass diffuser on the front and the large illuminated LCD panel at the back. The lump on the side's the lithium-ion battery. The light stand mount on the bottom is detachable - there is provision to swing any of the Profoto 120 light modifiers and to attach an umbrella as well. You can fire it bare and it works well - as long as the look you want can sustain the specularity. It is controlled by the Profoto Air - and you can get these to fit any number of professional cameras. I'm thrilled that mine is on the list. You can also control it with an app on your phone if you want the convenience of running it up nd down while it is fixed in some impossible position. The sheer portability of it means you can stick it ona stand and then just gun and run - without the heavy weight of battery packs or the uncertain floppiness of speedlights. Power? 250 watt/seconds. Charge? Apparently 400 full-bore shots from a battery charge. Stefan said he's been running events with the test rig for the last four days and has only dropped the charge 20%. In any case, the packs charge from the mains, or you can connect the whole lot and just use it as a mains unit anyway. The provision of a large LED modelling light in the head with a provision to change the colour temperature from daylight to incandescent is wonderful for the still shooter but even more so for the video worker. They get a truly powerful, truly portable lighting source as a bonus. Note the umbrella shot of Stefan is under the LED lighting. The small box is the case for a single unit - there is also a matching dual container for the twin-head package. Saul mentioned that he has got one of these available right now for sale. I suspect there will be a ready sale for it, and for a lot more of these units in the future. It is the answer for shows and weddings for sure. We got Sam and Chelsea to pretend at being a wedding couple and it took some beautiful shots of them. And I got one of my favourite photographers - Mark Wagenaar - in the buffet line. Mark's accused me of stalking him to take food photographs but apart from the incident with the turkey leg and the telephoto they have all been pure coincidence....honest. And the Northbridge Hotel do turn on a rather nice food table for these events. I had a slider too... Final Plug: The patient and professional Chelsea Kerridge from Scene Model management was the subject for the night. She coped with all the instructions and made it all look easy.