aging Inon strobe?

[Ardy]

Sorry for your "bad" luck. You can always sell it and get the D1 but it is not so clear to me that the D1 is all that much better.
Bill

Hi bill respect your knowledge about these matters - what makes you think this? Certainly interested before I sell my Inon 240 and buy one.

 

[tadawson]

The flash tube in your strobe does have a finite life, but unless the maker did something stupid when they built the strobe, it should be replaceable.

Caps can age too, but typically flash caps can be reformed by letting the strobe run for a while on standby . . .

- Tim

 

[bvanant]

Hi bill respect your knowledge about these matters - what makes you think this? Certainly interested before I sell my Inon 240 and buy one.

The D1 is certainly cheaper to buy new (about $100 cheaper) so if I didn't have anything, I would go that way but in the water the difference between the two strobes is not very much. The D1 has a single tube (remember when everyone beat up Inon S2000 for a single tube) and is about a half stop brighter when you put the diffuser on (which you will need to do to get the beam angle of the Z240. The half stop brightness means for the same scene at ISO 100 you can shoot from about 9 inches further away. I haven't tried the TTL response on the D1 and I hear it is great but historically the S&S TTL modes (for Canon cameras, I don't speak Nikon) was not as good as the Inon but I suspect that is now all fixed. The D1 is 87x135x111mm and weighs 650 g and the Z240 is 99mm x 122mm x 100mm and weighs 583 g. The Inon is about 8% smaller and 11% lighter which means they are both about the same size. The published recycle times are similar but the Inon is a bit (20%) faster from a full dump. In any case, if I didn't have any strobes I would probably buy the D1 but I really don't think that there are any photos that you could take with a pair of D1 strobes that you couldn't get with a pair of Z240 strobes and in a rapid shooting scenario the published recycle times suggest the Inon might be a bit faster but at low power I really don't know. So the bottom line for me at least is that since the differences are so small I wouldn't sell an Inon to buy a S&S since I can not figure out what the big advantage would be other than having the latest toys.
Bill