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Profoto Connect Pro for Leica problems


Kristofferpaulsen

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Hello all.. 

Just picked up my Connect Pro, and it's got a weird thing where when it's in manual mode it intermittently drops the light power down to 3.. anyone else had any problems similar to this?

Have tried doing a factory reset but it doesn't seem to fix it, and have tried it on D2s, A2, and B1s, all with same result

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Try to change the light power in manual mode with the wheel on the Connect pro and see what appears then on your A2 matching same group and same channel, e.g, 4A on the Connect Pro and also on A2

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5 hours ago, Kristofferpaulsen said:

Hello all.. 

Just picked up my Connect Pro, and it's got a weird thing where when it's in manual mode it intermittently drops the light power down to 3.. anyone else had any problems similar to this?

Have tried doing a factory reset but it doesn't seem to fix it, and have tried it on D2s, A2, and B1s, all with same result

Yes same problem with my B10

sometimes drops to energy 3.2 after shooting energy 8.5 and I don't touch any dials when this occurs.  Someone suggested that it stores a memory shot if you use TTL and it is reverting back to that for some reason.

For me, this mysterious drop in energy setting (like 5 stops) only occurs when I am I HSS mode with a fast shutter.  It doesn't do this when I am using the light in an indoor scene with 1/250th...

Robb

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I have opened a ticket earlier this month for the observed problem. Here is a quote from an email I received from Profoto today

Yes, unfortunately we have an issue in the Connect Pro Leica firmware that causes sudden energy changes.
We are working on a new firmware that will be released shortly, i cannot give you an exact date as of now.

A work-around is to set the remote to X-Sync, this will remove TTL and HSS capability, but you will not experience the sudden energy changes.”

I have not tested this but wanted to share the information 

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I experienced similar problems with reduced power, although I was not clever enough to understand what was happening or not happening at the time.  So, I went down this rabbit hole trying every setting to produce usable images for a promotion. 

I was in a dark restaurant with mixed sources from the side, so I used vflat flags to block.  Once the strobes began to drop in power, I went through every mode in a panic. 

This brings up my questions: 

1.  Will it be possible to shoot in HSS over 1/250 or 1/500 plus without catching the shutter in the image?  I did not know about this (image enclosed).  

2.  What exactly is the profoto connect pro supposed to do?  Does it calculate how much light you require from the sl2s light meter reading and then adjust the strobe accordingly? 

 

 

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Yeah just got this back from Profoto also.. apparently all those registered with the trigger get a notification when the new firmware gets pushed out. Sounds like they're madly working on it now. Pretty shitty that it was released into the world in a state like that..!

 

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11 hours ago, tangosix said:

I experienced similar problems with reduced power, although I was not clever enough to understand what was happening or not happening at the time.  So, I went down this rabbit hole trying every setting to produce usable images for a promotion. 

I was in a dark restaurant with mixed sources from the side, so I used vflat flags to block.  Once the strobes began to drop in power, I went through every mode in a panic. 

This brings up my questions: 

1.  Will it be possible to shoot in HSS over 1/250 or 1/500 plus without catching the shutter in the image?  I did not know about this (image enclosed).  

2.  What exactly is the profoto connect pro supposed to do?  Does it calculate how much light you require from the sl2s light meter reading and then adjust the strobe accordingly? 

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

hello! It looks like you're over 250th there.. But basically the Connect Pro is the first one to offer high speed sync, that works, in a nutshell, by pulsing the strobe so that it covers the entire time the shutter is open. It can do this in TTL automatic mode, as well as manual. It is supposed to automatically switch to HSS when the shutter speed goes over 250, and can go as high as 8000th. My assistant shoots Sony, and we tried it with his new trigger, and sure enough it works flawlessly.

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On 1/30/2023 at 12:13 PM, tangosix said:

I experienced similar problems with reduced power, although I was not clever enough to understand what was happening or not happening at the time.  So, I went down this rabbit hole trying every setting to produce usable images for a promotion. 

I was in a dark restaurant with mixed sources from the side, so I used vflat flags to block.  Once the strobes began to drop in power, I went through every mode in a panic. 

This brings up my questions: 

1.  Will it be possible to shoot in HSS over 1/250 or 1/500 plus without catching the shutter in the image?  I did not know about this (image enclosed).  

2.  What exactly is the profoto connect pro supposed to do?  Does it calculate how much light you require from the sl2s light meter reading and then adjust the strobe accordingly? 

 

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

This looks like a Resturant with very little to no sunlight, why to you have the need to shoot a faster shutter?

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I have to report that I was shooting portraits today indoors with my b10.

great light.  Ultra portable and clean.  I’ll be adding more.  

the connect pro did the same energy drop thing again, this time camera shutter was in manual and never changed at 1/250th at f4  energy set to 7

lot of problems with the connect pro causing the b10 to drop 3-5 stops many, many times, without me changing any settings. After resetting the light back to energy 7.0, the next exposure was about a stop too bright from the previous settings - kind of like when you switch off a pack and hit the test button to dump the extra power remaining prior to pulling head connections…. Except in this situation, the strobe would just pass on the extra stop of energy into the next shot, then it would return to shooting a few frames correctly, then would drop 3-5 stops again…

so after it doing this during my test individual, I just swapped to my old school profoto air non-ttl trigger (still avail today new for $400…) worked like a champ the rest of the day.

So I won’t be using the connect pro until they fix the bugs with firmware.  No harm, no foul, but the Leica version is not ready for prime time.  But I look forward to HSS and the control precision getting there in the near future.

Robb

 

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On 1/31/2023 at 12:03 AM, Kristofferpaulsen said:

Pretty shitty that it was released into the world in a state like that..!

 

 

my suspicion is that profoto partnered with Leica to produce  the trigger. it was complicated to produce and Leica needed to ad some code to the camera to work.
I think Godox just developed they're trigger independently and came out before godox.

in a conversation with Leica people they told me that it took a long time to get it to work to this point. 

the Godox works well on SL2 and ad400 in TTL. not all flashes work and M11 does not work.

Let's hope Profoto can get to the code soon.

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1 hour ago, Photoworks said:

This looks like a Resturant with very little to no sunlight, why to you have the need to shoot a faster shutter?

 

A streak of evening sun was beaming through a window behind me and a messy bar area was 20ft in front of the lens.  I was trying to black it out.  Also, my final shots were to drop strawberries into the champagne.  The output changes threw me off.  I was increasing e power with every shot, but then it would lower and I wold increase more. 

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11 hours ago, robb said:

so after it doing this during my test individual, I just swapped to my old school profoto air non-ttl trigger (still avail today new for $400…) worked like a champ the rest of the day.

 

Robb

 

I plan on using the Air also to get back to baseline.  I enjoyed the experience of using the Air with my M11 and going all manual made the values more clear in my mind.  Using the same manual techniques on the SL2S has generated satisfying results.  And sometimes unexpected Great results in color.  

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On 2/1/2023 at 2:06 PM, robb said:

I have to report that I was shooting portraits today indoors with my b10.

great light.  Ultra portable and clean.  I’ll be adding more.  

the connect pro did the same energy drop thing again, this time camera shutter was in manual and never changed at 1/250th at f4  energy set to 7

lot of problems with the connect pro causing the b10 to drop 3-5 stops many, many times, without me changing any settings. After resetting the light back to energy 7.0, the next exposure was about a stop too bright from the previous settings - kind of like when you switch off a pack and hit the test button to dump the extra power remaining prior to pulling head connections…. Except in this situation, the strobe would just pass on the extra stop of energy into the next shot, then it would return to shooting a few frames correctly, then would drop 3-5 stops again…

so after it doing this during my test individual, I just swapped to my old school profoto air non-ttl trigger (still avail today new for $400…) worked like a champ the rest of the day.

So I won’t be using the connect pro until they fix the bugs with firmware.  No harm, no foul, but the Leica version is not ready for prime time.  But I look forward to HSS and the control precision getting there in the near future.

Robb

 

yeah that's what i've been doing.. having said that you can use the Connect in "x sync mode" where it'll work like your old one, and you'll be able to do all the fancy group controlling and app integration 

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On 2/2/2023 at 1:28 AM, tangosix said:

 

A streak of evening sun was beaming through a window behind me and a messy bar area was 20ft in front of the lens.  I was trying to black it out.  Also, my final shots were to drop strawberries into the champagne.  The output changes threw me off.  I was increasing e power with every shot, but then it would lower and I wold increase more. 

yeah terrible. Put it on x synch for now. Here's to hoping for an update soon. In the meantime I've been trolling their insta with "Make profoto connect great again!" comments.. they even posted a video from btw with a leica shooter today.. with the connect. Hilarious. 

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On 2/2/2023 at 1:42 AM, tangosix said:

I plan on using the Air also to get back to baseline.  I enjoyed the experience of using the Air with my M11 and going all manual made the values more clear in my mind.  Using the same manual techniques on the SL2S has generated satisfying results.  And sometimes unexpected Great results in color.  

i mean there's no reason not to use the Air if you dont need HSS or TTL, aside from the pretty display and ease of using groups.. 

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On 2/2/2023 at 1:20 AM, Photoworks said:

my suspicion is that profoto partnered with Leica to produce  the trigger. it was complicated to produce and Leica needed to ad some code to the camera to work.
I think Godox just developed they're trigger independently and came out before godox.

in a conversation with Leica people they told me that it took a long time to get it to work to this point. 

the Godox works well on SL2 and ad400 in TTL. not all flashes work and M11 does not work.

Let's hope Profoto can get to the code soon.

I dunno man, when was the connect announced? Like, May? And it's now what, Feb? Almost a year, and the physical units have been floating around since December and it STILL doesn't work.. What are they even doing??

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