I recently got a new studio strobe for the studio I am setting up here in my home town. The brand on Amazon is Neewer. After looking around a bit I have found some other brand names on units that look exactly the same. So I think it is sold out of China and different people stamp their name on it and resell it. That is OK though. It is still surprisingly good.
So here is the deal with the strobe. I have been looking for a while at Alien Bee strobes by Paul C. Buff. But, even though they are very inexpensive as strobes go, they are still like $275 for the least expensive lowest power units. They are really nice. But that is still a bit of change to put down per strobe. Well recently in shopping at Amazon I found the Neewer C-250 strobe. The reviews sounded fairly good. So I decided to take a shot at one. Actually I got both one of the C-250 and one of the 180 watt second strobes. The smaller one is $40.
So the video review up above is for the C-250. I found it to be quite well built. The housing is metal. The light works well and consistently. The front of the light is built in such a way to easily take the generic Cowboy Studio speed rings for different modifiers. There are other speed rings out there, but I recommend the Cowboy Studio rings. They are just built really nice. I got a softbox for it along with a set of barn doors, a honeycomb grid, and some colored gel filters.
The only real negatives I have found so far with the strobe are first, at full power it takes about 4 seconds to recycle. The same is not true of the Alien Bee (we actually have two in the studio now also). Second, you can only adjust the power from 1/8th power to full power, so three stops of light adjustment. And third, there is no way to turn off the beep when the strobe is done recycling if you don't like that.
On the positive, there is more than enough power in my small studio to light the subject. The strobe fires every single time. There is a great sync port and the cable to plug in from the sync port to my Yongnuo RF-603 radio trigger. The strobe can optically trigger. It has a modeling light. The modeling light power adjusts as you adjust strobe power. The unit has a very long AC power cord, so you can easily move it around without an extension cord.
So if you want fancy, get the Alien Bee. But if you are on a budget, don't feel shy getting this strobe. At $80 you can get three of these for the cost of a single Alien Bee strobe. Sure, you might eventually move up to Alien Bee. But if you are just starting out this is the strobe to cut your teeth on.
I am planning on a review of the smaller 180 watt second strobe and another cute little strobe that I got recently so you can see how to inexpensively set up a three
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