Yesterday, I received my long awaited Lumedyne UltraMegaCycler, which is advertised by Lumedyne to be the fastest external batterie available.

I wanted to know exactly and made a little speed comparison betweeen some external flash batteries.

I used a Canon 580 EXII, loaded with 4 fully charged Sanyo Eneloops (2000mAh), set on manual full power (1/1), fired by hand. C-Fn 12 was set to "1", which means the flash was powered by external battery only. The in flash batteries only powered the flash's electronics and display, not the capazitator.

Then I stopped the time from firing until the flash's ready light was lightened again (manually, with a normal wrist watch).

So, this is NO SCIENTIFIC test, it'll only give you a hint of speed for several external power sources.

I made 10 measurements with every fully charged power source and then calculated average value for every battery.


And these are the results:

4 AA Eneloops in flash only, no external battery: 3.053 sec

Quantum Turbo, set to "fast": 2.141 sec

Quantum Turbo, set to "ultra fast": 1.569 sec

Quantum Turbo Z: 1.981 sec

Quantum Turbo SC: 1.965 sec

Canon CP-E2 (6x fully charged Eneloops): 3.776 sec

Canon CP-E3 (8x fully charged Eneloops): 2.131 sec

Lumedyne UltraMegaCycler: 1.118 sec

Conclusion 1: If speed matters, the Lumedyne UltraMegaCycler is really the fastest of all my external batteries. Lumedyne says, it is made for speed (be careful not melting your flash!), not for perseverance. Adorama.com writes: "We recommend these extremely fast Cyclers only when the speed of the recycle is the main concern."

I guess the heavy'n'bulky Quantum Turbo gives you more flashes per charge, but not as fast as the Lumedyne UMCycler.

Some details from Quantum:

http://www.qtm.com/Turbo/?res_set=yes&...0&resh=1200


Some from Lumedyne:

http://www.lumedyne.com/products/CYCLERS.ASP


Conclusion 2: Both manufacturers advertise the recycle times in an optimistic way.

Quantum says:

Turbo Battery Turbo Slim Compact Turbo Compact

Shoe flash 1.0 sec. 1.4 sec. 1.4 sec.

Handle flash 1.25 sec. 1.8 sec. 1.8 sec.

Qflash 2.5 sec. 3.0 sec. 3.0 sec.


In my test, I never reached 1 sec with the Turbo!


Lumedyne says 0.7 sec for a full recycle with the UMCycler. My hand stopped times are not far from this, but 0.7 sec isn't the same as 1.11 sec.


Conclusion 3: Canon's flash power packs really aren't Speedy Gonzalez. They provide you more flashes and longer shooting without changing batteries, but they really don't speed up your flash. But: The results may be different with different types of AA batteries used (Alkaline, Lithium, NiMh, NiCd, different mAh ...), I guess.

Conclusion 4: Sometimes, Canon's CP-E2, loaded with 6 Eneloops, can be slower than using just the 4 AAs in the flash itself!!! (???)

3.776 sec vs. 3.053 sec!!!

(Could this really be???)


Conclusion 5: The recycling times I measured for every single battery are close, which means: For the Quantum Turbo (Fast), I stopped times from 1.98 sec to 2.20 sec, for the Lumedyne, I stopped times ranging from 1.01 sec to 1.15 sec. Greatest difference in each row was about 0.46 sec (CP-E2): 3.56 sec to 4.00 sec.


Please feel free to continue this test row with other batteries like Al's Black Box, DigitalBatteries, other or same Lumedyne or Quantum stuff, other or same flashes.

Thanks for reading.

Mario