Honda generator for strobe light

Hello,

 

I was thinking of buying a Honda EU2000 generator as energy supply

for strobe lights outdoors. I use Hensel Contra 1000, and 500 self-

contained strobes. Anybody has has any experience in this field? Do

you think it's enough? Any hazards?

thanks

I use the Honda EU2000 for this very purpose. I am using Studio Pro lights. The EU2000 has plenty of power for this application and is the quietest gen set on the market. Also the pricest. The EU1000 will not do a very good job as it simply doesnt have the wattage. Besides when i am not using the lights i have enough power to make a cup of coffee with my EU2000...One of my models even used her curling iron with the EU2000....All things you cant do with a 1000 watt gen set. Have fun....Make sure you use a fuel stabilizer in the fuel as the gasoline can go stale in as little as 30 days depending what part of the country you are in.

You need 2.5 times the rated continuous amperage of all plugged in devices. Ex. 2.5 x 10 amps = 25 amps generator power minimum. If you don't have this, you will wear out electronic parts by drop in voltage effect. For nearly same price, get a EU3000 for 26 amps or so. Do a google search for: generator photo.net and readmy other suggestions.

But how to rate the power of those strobes? ALl I know is that they are 1000 and 500 jouls and they carry fuses of 10 AF and 2 AF respectively. How to be sure that a 2kW, 16.7 amp. generator is enough?

Thanks Timber,

 

It's not the same price: EU2000 is around $1000 and EU3000 is $1,700

Do you have 240 volt units? I don't know what "AF" is, sounds like "amps" in French. Call 800-988-7111 Holly Enterprises for free professional answer. They will look it up and determine amps draw. Speedotron told me that a 3x factor was their recommendation. This is because the capacitor actually draws more amps than the fuse is rated for! It peaks for about 1/2 second; too short to blow the fuse. www. I like the lightweight ones, but you gotta buy what will protect your investment. The EU3000 will take a Speedotron 2400 if set on slow recycle. This about equal to a 1200 pack on normal recycle. The eu3000 is rebuildable.

By the way, using the units on 1/4 power won't reduce the amp draw on the generator; it only reduces the amp draw TIME. The voltage will still drop, just less noticeable. The capacitor practically puts a short on the line. The eu's are perfect sine-wave units; good for packs that have computer chips in them. My guess is that a Hensel 1000 is like a 1000ws unit and that is about 10 amps. Therefore you need 25 amps for just that pack. That is a eu3000. Just a guess.

Having all those extra available watt seconds will now cost you big time. If you only

need 400ws total lights added up grand total, it would be so-so-o-o-o much less

expensive. In fact, the savings alone on the smaller generator would allow you to

purchase 2-3 Alienbees b400 units which are 160ws, only about 2 amps apiece! That

means you need 6 amps of generator power to power each b400! Therefore, you

could have 4 of these units for 24 amps total on an 25 amp EU3000!

 

When I hear the advice of posters telling the questioneer that he should buy extra

available power, an extra stop here and there, for a location shoot, I always think to

myself what a shock the user will see when he has to purchase a power generator for

it. Just one extra stop of power for 3-4 heads could cost $2100 more in generator

power.

 

Again, even if you don't use the full power setting on the power pack, you need to

have generator power to cover that power level. One reason is that the pack draws

the full power load on the very first time you power up, no matter what the setting.

 

And then there is the issue of who is going to lug the generator? The EU3000 is

about 135 lbs. So maybe you now need a $100 assistant to help you for one day for

all those generators!

 

So, part of the solution here maybe is to actually purchase a secondary lower powered

flash system. A transformer based system is cheap and will take square wave dirty

voltage cheap generator power with no problems. For $600 you can get a dirty

voltage generator that $1700 will buy in the perfect sine wave type generator.

 

You may need more than one EU3000!!! The EU3000 is sort of a standard rental item.

So maybe this is the answer, rent!

 

Use short and thick cords for low-losses.

Thanks Timber,

 

I found a good offer on the EU30is (that's the 230v version) I don't know if it weights less than the Eu3000. I tried it and it's easily carried by two people, plus it has wheels.

 

Now back to power calculations, are saying that what counts is the amps and not the wattsecond power of the stobes? The contra 1000 is 1000 wattseconds plus 300 watts modeling light while the 500 is 500 wattseconds plus 300 watts of modeling light; can't we just add those figures and come up with necessary wattage of the generator? Multiplied by safety factor..?

 

thanks

Right. Just add them up. However, your strobe may have a "smart" feature which turns off the modeling light when the capacitor charges. In this case, you would not add the modeling light.

I would compare amps, not wattseconds. Manufacturers play with the watt seconds number in their marketing. Because you have 230 volts, you are working more efficently; less losses for you. I bet the 2.5 factor would work fine. Use short thick cords to reduce resistance. The units are very quiet.

true watts divided by volts = amps x 2.5 (or 3) = generator amp load

Timber,

How important is the inverter technology for such an application?

Inverters can either produce square wave current or perfect sine wave current.

Everything I have been told and read says this Honda EU30i or 3000 or the EU2000 or

EU1000 produces perfect sine waves. I an not an electronics guy, but I believe that

the inverter is responsible for producing the perfect sine wave, or refining what the

generator puts out.

 

Honda has 3 levels of "wave shapeness" the highest is "perfect sine wave"--very

expensive and this is what you need for your capacitor multiplier packs and mono

lights. Then Honda has a cheaper "emulator" which is sort of a dinged up perfect sine

wave shape. Lastely, there are the square wave generators which appear as inverters

for batteries. I believe the cheapest Hondas don't have inverters but rather use an

alternator to produce direct AC current. That also means this AC will have cycle

variations according to RPM variations. So, this generator is for gross use for hand

drills, heaters, pumps. You see the cheaper (but very big) generators on the backs of

pick-up trucks. Don't plug your nice system into one of these generators.

 

Honda has a site to discuss the differences in their systems. They have graphs of the

sine waves that are produced by their medium and top line units. I am not sure about

the lower units.

 

You should not run your modeling lights while you flash. The Speedotron Force 10

has modeling lights that automatically turn off while the unit recycles. Maybe you

have this feature. You do not want this additional load on the generator during

recycle. The modeling lights are a huge power drain, even if they are small and not

very bright.

 

I think you got the best generator.

 

Remember, you can run more heads if you own a smaller watt second system like an

alienbees B400 unit which is only 160 watt seconds. You could run several of these.

 

What you could do is simply trade plugs from each head, plugging one in at a time to

recycle power. You could run all the modeling lights from all heads alone at a time.

What you can't do is run all heads and all modeling lights; and recycle all heads at the

same time. Generator power is very expensive!

 

But now that you have generator power, you can recharge batteries in the field, no

problem. This means you can use battery powered units all you want. These are

Norman 200b, 200c, Lumedyne, Balcar AQ 1200. You should look at the Balcar

someday, it runs on a car battery.

 

Having a generator puts you free! Running the 1000ws unit should be your limit

though. But what I would do is put the other 2 units on the same line and alternate

plugging them into the generator with the 1000ws unit each time they recycle. There

is always a way around...

Thanks,

 

My question was: is a perfect sine wave mandatory for a strobe unit?

A perfect sine wave is mandatory for any transformerless or "capacitor multipler" flash

unit. A square wave is OK only for transformer flashes: examples: Speedotron

Brownline, Norman 450 volt series. The reason for this is that the unit needs the true

"peak" of the sine wave to read accurately. Transformer units are heavier than

transformerless units. If in doubt, call your manufacturer or use a perfect sine wave

unit.

Hi, I'm new here.

Recetly I bought a Honda u 3000is. I live in Europe, so it is 230V model

I'm using it with Broncolor Grafit A4 poer pack. It is working fine, but in slow charge mode. I spoke to a Bron guy in Photokina this september and he told me the power reccomendations for the power packs

Grafit A2/4 - 10A in slow charge mode, 16A in fast.

I read some where that eu3ooois is capable of 4500W peak power to start the engine. But I'm not sure this is the case here.

Thanks to Bron Grafit the power consumptions is not big, because it only refills the capasitors in each shot. Only the first time it has the big current.

Hope this helps.

 

P.S. I;m going to try the eu200is model for the same purpose. I'll let you know the result.

<p>FYI, dont try this at home, i gave up on the math and plugged it all in, etc., ...<br>

I have 4 AB 800's and one EU 2000i.<br>

I have not really done the math, and cant say what would happen if you ran AB 800's on a EU 2000i for long periods of time, as I primarily use my lights in a studio indoors. I wanted to have the remote option too so I plugged them all in and tried it once.<br>

The setup appears to work great. The generator powers the lights on economy mode (idle up on demand) without breaking as sweat.<br>

.02 cents worth.</p>