- Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on the Slanted Lens we're going to review
Dynalite's new monoblock, the Baja B4.
Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on the Slanted Lens
we're going to review Dynalite's new monoblock. It's the Baja B4.
This is a great step forward in monoblocks, because it has several key
elements that every monoblock has needed for a longtime. One, it has a lithium
battery. This is not an AC plug-in-the- wall monoblock. It's a lithium battery
completely contained monoblock. You put it up. You turn it on. You shoot away.
It gets 700 to 750 flashes on full power, if you dial it down to half power you're
going to get twice that, so 14 or 1,500 flashes. All right, so let's take a look
at some of the feature on this monoblock, the Baja B4. First off, it's just under
$600. It's like $599 on B&H. For that price, you're getting a monoblock, a 400
watt second monoblock with a lithium battery. On the side here, you've got a
lithium battery. You can take this off. This battery pops out. And if you want to
you can actually have an additional lithium battery. You can unplug it right
there and pop the new one right in, very easy to switch out. So I think the
lithium battery is really what makes this exciting. Other than that it's a
monoblock, which is great, but the lithium battery is really what makes this thing
sing. It's now a self-contained powered unit you can take out on location. So on
the back we just switch it on. We have in tenth stop increments. We can dial this
down from seven, down to 1-0, so it really cuts the power down. You cut it down.
And it automatically, that's the one thing that caught me off guard when we first did
it, is when you dial this thing down, eventually it says you need to exhaust the
power, and it exhausts itself. So it's always giving you the right exposure. Lars
was staring in this when we had it on set the other day, and it just flashed in his
face. He didn't expect that. Now, the other buttons here. There are several
things that this does that are really important to understand.
One is, that you have a control, a radio control. You plug this little block into
the back of this little monoblock. With this radio control, and you have this
monoblock in all of your other heads, you can control up to 16 different categories,
or 16 different groups of monoblocks. You can put three on a background, and that's
group one. You can put two as your key light, and that's group two. And now, from
right here, from this little thing in my hand, I can hit group one, and I can dial
the power up and down on those strobes, and I don't have to leave the camera. So I
can dial them up and down, which is always been the issue with monoblocks. Because
when you fly a monoblock, which we did recently up into the background as a key
light from behind, and it's too bright, you've got to yank the whole thing down
and make an adjustment, and put it back up, and hopefully you get it in the right
place, and this just solves all of that. You can put your monoblocks up. You can go
here. You can make your adjustments using this, and it's very, very simple to use.
Love this feature with this strobe head. And a lot of monoblocks are going to this.
When you combine the lithium battery, which makes it completely location
portable, with this little device here that allows you to dial the power up and
down from the camera, I think you have a very solid piece of equipment. The next
feature is very exciting about the Baja B4's stroboscopic strobing. You can turn
it onto one of the modes and get five blast, dut, dut, dut, dut
or 10, or 15. So if you're going to drop an apple in the water you see each of
those doot, doot, doot, doot, doot
as it steps down. It is Bowens Mount. So if you have Bowens Mount equipment, all of
your other strobe rings and everything else is going to go onto to it, which is
really nice. The one thing that's kind of weenie about it is, that is the modeling
light. That's on full power. It's an LED modeling light on a location portable
unit. It isn't going to do anything for you. And the other thing is you can't
really turn it off. That's as far down as it goes. It's still kind of on. But as an
LED, it's not going to draw enough power to be an issue. But it's just kind of odd
to me that it doesn't go completely off, and also that it doesn't give you more
power when you turn it on because it's really not much value.
You'd have to be in a coal mine at midnight before it would ever be of any
value to you. So anyway, that's the downside. But other than that, I think for
a price under $600 there is everything to gain from this. It's really built well.
It gives you a lot of options. But now the idea is, let's get it out, and let's shoot
a few shots with it, and let's just see how it works when it's outside. So, let's
go out and test the Baja B4 out on location in my front yard.
So let's take a look at what we learned about this Baja B4.
First off, we shot 700 images. Now, we had dialed them down a
stop, so we weren't using them at full power, but we could have kept shooting. We
had not exhausted these by any means. We could have shot another, well, who knows.
We had not hit half power yet, so we had plenty of power left as that ratios out.
So really, we had plenty of flashes, and we could have gone on for a long time.
Secondly, I really love the fact that using this, it's the thing about
monoblocks that's always been frustrating to me, that is if you get them up on a
stand or something you got to tear it down in order to ratio the power, and once I
get a light set I don't like anyone touching it. Because even that area of
coverage can sometimes be very narrow, and very finicky, and I don't want anybody
touching the light once it's set. This also becomes the trigger. In the middle of
the shoot we also threw in a couple of the Dynalite regular pack and heads. So that
was the only one thing I didn't understand. Maybe there's a way to do it.
I just didn't solve it that night, is how to let this trigger those as well. And I'm
positive there's probably a way to do that, but I just didn't figure out how to
do it when we were on set. So the Baja B4 for me, as I specked it out against the
Einstein and some of the other monoblock head's out there, I think the fact that it
is battery portable makes it way and above anything else that's out there and that's
in the same price point. So, I know they're a sponsor of ours, and you're
saying, "Well, they're your sponsor." I wouldn't say it if it wasn't the case.
It's absolutely worth taking a look at. It's a battery portable monoblock.
It's going to work fabulous for you. I'd check it out. If I was going to buy
any kind of monoblock in this world, I would check it out.
So, for me five stars. Five stars.
I've never given stars to anything before. But today, I feel like stars. Five stars.