The first thing you notice is how solid this flash head feels. Like its cousin, the D1 Air, the familiar controls are there but enhanced—whittled down from 8 buttons to 5. The digital readout is replaced by a bright 1.4 x 2.5” LCD screen with 0.75” power digits and a white battery level indicator, an inch in height, which you can read at 20 paces. So, OK, I’m thinking, it’s an enhanced D1Air—a D1Air.1, if you will. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s see what it's got:
- Full wireless TTL compatibility, presently with Canon cameras, and Nikon next year
- Lithium-ion battery source
To say that the introduction B1 AirTTL 500W/s Off-Camera Flash is innovative is almost an ironic understatement; groundbreaking—faint praise. The applicable term is “game-changing,” the standard by which monoheads will be judged for years to come.
True, others have put together aspects of the B1 in small form factors, master-slave TTL etc., and offered battery power in some fine larger products, but Profoto is the first to put all of these features together in a 500W/s veritable TTL cannon, which is not to suggest that it’s in any way cumbersome or unwieldy; just the opposite.
The B1 weighs 6.6 lb with its battery; nearly the same as the D1Air with the battery removed. The D1’s 7 f-stops (7.8-500Ws) is upped to 9 in 1/10-stop or 1-stop increments for the B1. Recycling time is similar and the B1 continues the tradition of self-sensing 100-240VAC, 50/60 Hz, but this time with a 20W LED modeling lamp, the equivalent of a 70W halogen, which is easy on the battery and doesn’t have to be swapped out when you change voltage.
More: First Look: Profoto B1 500 AirTTL Off-Camera Flash | BH inDepth
- Solid, almost dense, polymer housing
- Built-in oversized, balanced handle
- Optical, IR, and radio compatibility
- Built-in 77-degree umbrella reflector
- Digital, in this case LCD, readout
- Full-line light-shaper compatibility, of course
- Overall feeling of confidence and coolness just by using it
- Full wireless TTL compatibility, presently with Canon cameras, and Nikon next year
- Lithium-ion battery source
To say that the introduction B1 AirTTL 500W/s Off-Camera Flash is innovative is almost an ironic understatement; groundbreaking—faint praise. The applicable term is “game-changing,” the standard by which monoheads will be judged for years to come.
True, others have put together aspects of the B1 in small form factors, master-slave TTL etc., and offered battery power in some fine larger products, but Profoto is the first to put all of these features together in a 500W/s veritable TTL cannon, which is not to suggest that it’s in any way cumbersome or unwieldy; just the opposite.
The B1 weighs 6.6 lb with its battery; nearly the same as the D1Air with the battery removed. The D1’s 7 f-stops (7.8-500Ws) is upped to 9 in 1/10-stop or 1-stop increments for the B1. Recycling time is similar and the B1 continues the tradition of self-sensing 100-240VAC, 50/60 Hz, but this time with a 20W LED modeling lamp, the equivalent of a 70W halogen, which is easy on the battery and doesn’t have to be swapped out when you change voltage.
More: First Look: Profoto B1 500 AirTTL Off-Camera Flash | BH inDepth