I received my income tax return last week and went ahead and finally bought myself some strobes. I was on the fence with exactly what I wanted to buy. I've been doing some good research and was stuck between buying a monolight kit or buying a couple of Canon 580EX II speedlights. Both types of strobes were very attractive to me and have their respective pros and cons. While I was at Calumet in Hollywood discussing my options with the sales person, I decided to buy the Calumet Travelite 750R kit and I'm quite happy with my purchase. The kit comes with two 750ws monolight heads that are radio capable using Pocket Wizards sync cards, two umbrellas, two stands and a carry luggage with wheels which is a great thing. Basically the entire kit looks like this:
Pros:
The entire kit set me back about $1200 dollars which is a fairly good price considering the other kits from other manufacturers I was looking at such as Elinchrome and Dynalite that had the same amount of power these lights have. Even though they are branded Calumet, the lights themselves are made by Bowens which is a pretty good brand. The ability to use these lights at any given location are probably what attracted me to them. With the separate purchase of a portable Bowens battery pack, I can readily shoot outdoors or any other location without an AC power source. The carry luggage nicely fits the entire kit with room for other stuff such as extra memory cards, cables & cords and possibly softboxes and such. The carry luggage with wheels would make lugging the kit all that more easier. 750ws is more than enough power for any photographer to need and that extra power can come in handy.
Cons:
The dials controlling the power output of the strobes are a bit flimsy and if I were to have any problems with these lights (they're pretty reliable from my research), it would be with the dials.
Weight is also a problem. Even though they're named "Travelite", they're far from it. Each unit weighs in at a pretty weighty 7lbs and considering the total weight of the carry luggage, the cables, umbrellas and the rest of the extras, you're looking at a total weight of 17lbs and that's excluding a portable battery pack should you own one so they're not so light even though they are portable. This can become problematic if your shoot is outdoors and consists of some hiking. Carrying 14 some odd pounds through rugged terrain (and possible a hill or two) will be a mission and a half.
I haven't really properly tested out the unit with a shoot. When I purchased the set, all I did was plug in each unit and fired off a couple of flashes and tested the consistency of the lights which were good although I don't have any examples to show at this moment. I expect to properly break these bad boys in in the next couple of months. I still need to purchase another sync card for one of the units and I intend to purchase a softbox as well.
I also intend to purchase many another set of these lights but lower power like the 350R but haven't really decided. Maybe to complete my portable studio set. However, I do also plan to buy a couple of Canon 580EX IIs later this year in order to make my set more portable. That way, I can decide to take one of my 750R and a whatever 580s I'll own for an outdoor shoot. Carrying 14lbs everytime I intend to shoot outdoors is just too much. Oh, I also need to buy some lenses but that's a whole nother story...
So...who wants to play hmm?