Vagabond Battery Pack

Has anyone used the Vagabond Battery Pack with monolights other than White

Lightning or Alien Bees? The folks at WL say it will void the warranty, and may

damage the inverter. I'd like to pick one up, but I don't want to buy more lights.

Comments?

Can�t answer your specific question, but the Vagabond appears to be just a packaged set of battery, charger and true sine wave inverter. Prices for those TSW inverters used to be outlandish, but have been falling pretty drastically, and I�ve assumed that contributed to Buff�s bringing the Vagabond to market. If you have the ability to connect two cables, you could put together a similar package with more oomph. The Vagabond is a 12V 15Ah battery with a 150w TSW output from the inverter. You can get a 12V deep-cycle battery with several times that rating for about $60, and a 300w TSW inverter can be found for about $200. Another $30-40 for the charger and connecting cables puts you in the $300 range for a setup that exceeds what Buff is selling for about $500.<p>

 

The pivotal question seems to be whether your lights really need the true sine wave AC current that the Alien Bees and White Lightnings apparently do. On dpreview, there is a forum discussion reporting use of a set of Speedotron 1000ws monolights with the Xantrex xPower 600, a unit that puts out "modified sine wave" AC. Contributors there indicated that some brands of monolights work fine on modified, as opposed to true, sine wave current, and inverters with that output are just a fraction of the price of the TSW type. Xantrex makes a more portable, 300 watt unit, with specs very similar to the Vagabond except for the waveform, and it goes for around $100. Their 600 unit, which is the subject of the report on dpreview, is a bit less portable, weighing about 50lbs, but with wheels and a roll-on luggage type handle.<p>

 

FWIW, the dpreview discussion is at http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1025&message=4387526

<p>I used to have one of these (vagabond), it worked perfectly! then I got me a bivoltage elinchrom, and the explorer xt SE was recommended by my friends. works great! http://www.innovatronix.com/detailpage.asp?categoryid=42&productid=363&categoryname=Products%20and%20Services</p>

<p>well, Explorer XT is an old model, they have the newer ones, <a href="http://www.innovatronix.com/explorerxt3andmini.asp">Explorer Mini and XT3</a>.</p>