Lighting


Tech Tuesday: Profoto B1 Breaks the Speed Barrier

December 16, 2014

By Laura Brauer

If you want to go where the action is but feel restricted by sync speeds, Profoto has the perfect solution for its B1 battery-powered, off-camera flash.

After a quick teaser posted on its site that had our hearts pumping and fingers crossed, the company announced a free firmware update that adds High Speed Sync (HSS) to the moonlight’s bag of tricks. Some people might wish they could sell a photograph for 6.5 million dollars, but we’re more realistic and quite happy with the B1’s addition of High Speed Sync.

B1 Profoto-HSS

With the HSS upgrade, the B1 emits a super fast series of flash pulses, which promises to delivery consistent exposure across images. HSS works with and without TTL.

You’ll need a B1, of course, as well as the Air Remote TTL  for Canon or Nikon to take advantage of this lightning fast performance. According to Profoto, there are no limits on aperture settings. Shutter speeds from 1/250th second to 1/8000th second are available with the HSS update. They do, however, recommend a maximum of 1/4000th second for Nikon cameras to achieve maximum benefits.

For more details, check out Profoto’s HSS FAQ blog post or email info@profoto.com. Click here to log into your account or register your product and download the upgrade. Be sure to update both the B1 and the Air Remote TTL-C (Canon)/TTL-N (Nikon).

The following cameras have been tested for compatibility, although Profoto reports that any exclusions from the list probably means that they simply haven’t yet tested that specific model yet but “it may still work perfectly.”

B1 CANONB1 CANONB1 NikonB1 CANON