Power cables running from four diesel, truck sized generators into a 20,000 square foot ballroom.
You think professional photographers are insane about back-up and the need to prevent failure at all costs? I recently did a corporate show in a splendid new hotel that was still working out a few kinks. I am good friends with the production company that turned a bare exhibition space into a high tech wonderland for a week. Acres of computer controlled, color shifting LED accent lights. Computer controlled moving lights. Hundreds of pedestals with tech products and demos as far as the eye could see.
They did due diligence months ago to make sure that the hotel was wired with enough juice to handle everything but that was all...........theoretical. The day before doors opened they brought up all the lights and in a few minutes the exhibition space went dark. Everything shut down. The hotel worked on it. The production company immediately got on the phone and arranged an alternate source of power. No questions asked. No prayerful hoping. All business. All on. All the time.
Turned out to be a programming glitch and the hotel ended up having more than enough power on tap. But the generators stayed in place. Just in case. The production company's motto? "When the credits roll make sure that heads don't." And that motto is trademarked. They don't have shows go down. It doesn't happen.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions over the years, are at stake thru reputation and word of mouth.
Next time someone tells you that you don't go on a job without mission critical back-up please remember how the big boys roll and save yourself from that possible career ending failure. Pack twice as much as you need. Make sure it works. Get ready for Murphy's Law.
and I decided that I liked it. Pretty well. It took a while to get used to handling a lighter and less robust lighting machine but the upside was the novelty and the digital controls on the back.
, covered with a diffusion "sock" and feathered quite a bit. I used a second light into a 
with it's diffusion cover and, I used a third light with a couple layers of diffusion over an 8 inch, 50 degree reflector as a background light.
that was a very popular look at how the change in cameras and imaging in general allowed us to use smaller and smaller lights to accomplish what we used to do with raw tonnage and brute force. But most of us already had substantial investments in "old school" lights and we kept using them.
) and I looked at a studio that was, all at once, freed up from the tyranny of traditional practice and conventional flash wisdom. I knew I needed some lights in order to do the more or less traditional work that came my way and I was ready for a change just for change's sake. I love my battery powered Elinchrom Ranger RX so I started looking for some cheap monolights to augment that system. At the very least I'd be able to use the same reflectors and speedrings. I thought I'd hit the sweet spot of capability and price when I found a set of used traditional Elinchrom monolights, a 500 watt and a 250 watt set of their original, made in Switzerland, metal monolights. They worked well and the price was astoundingly good. $400 for the pair. In a Pelican case. From a trusted dealer.
's, 
's) for studio portrait shoots for several reasons: 1. They are not graceful in accepting all of my favorite modifiers. 2. They don't have modeling lights. 3. They don't recycle quickly enough. I was looking for all of the benefits I used to get with traditional lights but I wanted them to be more flexible in terms of power settings and I really wanted modeling lights. And here's what I finally found out: