On camera flash is one of my worst photography nightmares. I’ve never liked using speedlights and especially putting them on top of my camera. I’ve used Nikon SB-700s and SB-910s and I despised using them. The quality of the light wasn’t great and using AA batteries was not ideal. Over the duration of the battery life, the more you used it the worse the performance. Changing out AAs weren’t fun either especially at events.
This all changed last year when Profoto released their A1 last year and I decided to take it for a spin. I took it to a wedding which had over 300 people in which I had to shoot a tea ceremony and countless amounts of family photos.
What I valued most about the Profoto A1 was how well it kept up with the speed of my photography. I was shooting constantly at 6 fps and I would say it only dropped 1 frame out of 6. On TTL it was a bit slower but it was very useful especially with the constant changing lights on the dance floor. I made the mistake of only bringing one battery but luckily I was able to pump out 800 shots and charge my battery when there were quiet moments.
Although I’m not fully convinced about using flash on camera, the Profoto A1 is definitely the flash I would only use on my camera. It’s reliable, fast and lasts a lot longer than a set of batteries.
– Andrew Hoang
