Flash with the most of continuous shots?

[NostraHistoria]

I have a Canon T3i, and I need a flash that will take around 1300 continuous shots. I take pictures of books, and I will be going to Germany for research. I need a flash that will not power down after 100 shots, which my default flash does.

Can anyone help?

 

[Chris Santucci]

All you need is a flash that accepts changeable batteries and some extra charged batteries or an external power supply.

 

[Josh66]

For pictures of books, I don't think you'll need much power - I think almost any speedlight will work.

At lower power levels, you'll get more flashes per change of batteries - I don't really see you needing to use the flash at full power for books...

 

[Designer]

You could also get a mains adapter for your flash.

 

[Overread]

A few thoughts:

1) How many shots you get depends not just on the flash, but also on the batteries themselves. Good quality high capacity AA batteries will give you more shots than those with a lower maximum capacity.

2) I would strongly suggest rechargable batteries and a good quality recharging unit. This gives you the ability to save in the long term since you won't have to replace the batteries. Powerrex/Maha make a good quality selection of charging units which will individually charge each battery - their higher end units can charge up to 8 batteries whilst some others (eg their C9000) can recondition older rechargable batteries to get a bit more life out of them.

Note - recharging should ideally be a slow process (helps preserve battery life) and as a result charging can take many hours. You can vary good quality charging units (like those suggested above) for fast or slow recharging cycles. In a pinch this means you can fast charge the batteries; though ideally you'd want to just cycle through battery sets on the first day and slip the batteries into charge as soon as they are dry.

3) As said pretty much any speedlite flash should be able to do this; though chances are you'll have to take a few packs of AA batteries with you to get the job done.

 

[NostraHistoria]

You could also get a mains adapter for your flash.

So, you are implying that after 100 shots with my battery, the increased wait time between shots, maybe 5-10 seconds, is because of the battery and not overheating of the flash? I thought that it was a problem with the flash overheating.

In another thread, I was recommended the Nissen MG8000

Flash that will endure over 2000 continuous shots?

 

[Josh66]

The issue is the flash head heating up. The higher the flash power, the faster that will happen. For the type of shooting it sounds like you'll be doing, I don't think that will be an issue though.

What flash are you using now? From your first post, it sounded like you were using the pop-up flash on the camera.

 

[Overread]

You might consider using 2 flash units - linked up to the camera you can lower your power output of each individual flash whilst giving you the light you need to work with.

 

[TCampbell]

Canon makes an external battery pack which holds 8 batteries instead of 4, but you may as well just swap the batteries as the flash starts to recycle more slowly.

There is a product called the Tronix Speedfire which provides AC power to run a flash, but it's only compatible with specific flashes (e.g. some Canon model flashes such as the 580EX II and 600EX-RT have an external power socket which is normally intended for an external wearable battery pack.) Flashes that aren't designed for external power would typically run off the AA batteries.

YEARS AGO our studio experimented with a company that made a module shaped like 4 AA batteries (it was 4 plastic tubes bonded together) with contacts on them. You had to cut a small hole in the battery door and this allowed you to run the flash either off an external battery or off AC power (e.g. a 4v or 4.5v would be fine. Batteries actually supply slightly higher voltage when fully charged and lower as they get drained so the flash can actually deal with a small variance.) That was 30 years ago. No clue who made them. I've never seen anything like that in recent years (but that doesn't mean _someone_ doesn't make something.)

EDIT:

Ok, I just saw that this was about "heat" and not battery capacity. Yes, you can cluster flashes and it massively cuts down on the heat build up. But clustering flashes gets expensive. You might prefer to use continuous lights.

 

[NostraHistoria]

The issue is the flash head heating up. The higher the flash power, the faster that will happen. For the type of shooting it sounds like you'll be doing, I don't think that will be an issue though.

What flash are you using now? From your first post, it sounded like you were using the pop-up flash on the camera.

I am using the pop-up flash.

After seeing the results of this test, I really want the Nissin.



Nissin:

 

[Josh66]

I am using the pop-up flash.

In that case, I stand by what I said earlier (I started to worry that you were already using a speedlight and having these issues with that, lol)- you will see a massive improvement with pretty much any speedlight (hot-shoe mounted flash).

Plus, just having it will open up other photo opportunities for you.

 

[Gavjenks]

1) If all you are doing is lighting up books, why not just buy a $30 worth of halogen desk light + simple diffuser and leave it on the whole time? I don't see why this requires flash at all. 2) If you insist on flash for some reason, you can buy a basic studio strobe that is MADE to plug into the wall and fire pretty much infinitely, for like... 100-200 dollars for sufficiently decent quality for lighting up books for archival shots.