Yorkshire: British studio lighting equipment company Lencarta have announced two new additions to their range of battery-powered flash systems, the Discovery and PowerTrekker.
Lencarta Discovery
The Lencarta Discovery is the company’s own version of the Jinbei Discovery (DC-600 only). It uses the same heads and battery as the original Jinbei system but has “better circuitry … giving faster recycling and draining the battery less”.
Garry Edwards, technical advisor and customer support for Lencarta, told Lighting Rumours:
I’m very impressed with its performance, both colour temperature consistency and flash energy consistency is spot on, it recycles pretty quickly and it looks good too. The modelling lamp is brilliant (literally) and I think that once we can meet demand it will be the obvious choice for people who were in the market for the less powerful Quadra, and at a much better price.
Specifications include a t0.5 flash duration of 1/900 – 1/1400 s (the Jinbei Discovery is listed at 1/800 – 1/1200 s) and a recycle time of “under 3 seconds” at full power (Jinbei: 2.8 – 3.5 s). For more details, visit the product page.
The Lencarta Discovery is currently in production and expected to be released in the UK in April, though this date may be pushed back due to logistical difficulties. The 600J generator will cost £539.50, the Bowens-mount flash head £178.47 and the ring flash head £212.72. All items are available for pre-order through the Lencarta web site.
The previous battery-powered pack and head system from Lencarta, the Safari, will be “staying [on sale] for the foreseeable future”.
Lencarta PowerTrekker
The PowerTrekker is a planned 2-in-1 battery system. It will offer pure sine wave AC outputs for studio flashes and DC outputs for future Lencarta monolights. Edwards says:
The PowerTrekker is pretty exciting too, but it isn’t in production yet and will be some time before we can actually sell any. So far we’ve got an empty box, and we’ve got a working prototype, but doing the final things needed to get it to actually go in the box is going to delay things.
In terms of design, it has 3 x 13A sockets and also 3 other sockets that feed DC current. The DC sockets will connect directly to the future generations of Lencarta mono heads, because there are obvious advantages to using DC power.
On AC power, we’re getting 1800 x 300Ws flashes from a charge, that’s impressive, but the engineers reckon that it should be possible to get even more, probably over 2000. The target price is £350, it may even be as low as £325.
There is currently no projected release date for the Lencarta PowerTrekker.