Recently we've re-evaluated our lighting for on location sessions and weddings. Technology has advanced incredibly in the recent years, allowing for more portable lighting. In the past you've seen us drag our heavy Photogenic/White Lightening studio strobes to weddings our Alien Bees to sessions. They either require a nearby outlet or an external battery making it even heavier. While they have always been very reliable and allowed us to work in any lighting situation thrown at us, it was always a hassle. We haven't gone away with them and we still keep them for studio-styled shots. However, or go to off-camera for locations sessions are now the Godox AD200s.
They seem to fall somewhere between your regular speedlight and studio strobes. Obvioulsly, two of the biggest pros is size and price. On top of that it offers about 500 flashes fully charged with quick recycle times (depending on your flash power). It's no longer a necessity to drag an external battery, or a pocket full of AA batteries for the speedlights! It comes with 2 interchangeable heads; a Fresnel Head (comparable to a speedlight) and a Bare Bulb Head (comparable to the strobes). While it may be less powerful than our big studio lights, it still packs quite a punch at 200W. You can buy a dual flash bracket if you want to combine 2 for more power.
Other features that convinced us to purchase these lights include: TTL, HSS, and the fact that it supports Canon and Nikon (and others). This is of utmost important to us since we are a multi-brand using studio! We use the Godox Xpro trigger (one for Canon, one for Nikon) to fire the built-in receiver.
The bonus is we can control the flash power from the trigger on our camera. No more lowering/raising the light stand to change the flash power level. We can have 2 flashes set to 2 different channels, so one photographer can use one flash without interfering with the other (perfect for our receptions).
These can be used with several different light modifiers. We typically choose our Magmod system though due to ease of use and portability. If you are not familiar with Magmod we suggest you look into their products. They will be a topic of a future blog post for sure!
We hope this has helped anyone looking into a new system for off-camera flash. We highly recommend it's portability, ease of use, and functionality!
Mary Heern, Exploretographer
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