I bought some Excella Casa 250's last year from the photo shop on the 4th floor at Panthip and they worked reasonably well for the first year, but now after 18 months or so, the lighting output is extremely uneven.

I did a shoot yesterday and I did a series of 12 shots. When I check the exposure, I found that every exposure was different (with no change in the dialed in light output and the exposure locked down in Manual on my camera). Basically, the output varies so wildly from flash to flash that it's just about impossible to calculate the correct exposure.

1) Anybody else have this experience? I don't think it's the lamps because the output varies from high to low, from shot to shot.

I'm guessing that the capacitors are going bad. Well, at least they were cheap enough (20,000 baht for the entire kit of 2 strobes, soft boxes, stands, etc.).

2) Does anybody have any experience with having strobes repaired in Bangkok? I'm guessing this isn't very likely but thought I'd ask...

3) I'm thinking that #2 is unlikely so now I want to buy some new more reliable equipment. Profoto, Britek, etc. Anybody know the best place to buy this kind of gear locally? I'm trying to avoid laying out big bucks for Elinchrom.

Check out the following company on Petchkasem Road in Bangkok...

http://www.ekasilp.com/

Ekasilp has a showroom with just about every type of lighting equipment that you could need. They sell multiple lines of strobes that are manufactured in Thailand. I bought some backgrounds there a few months ago. Earlier in the year, I bought a set of Elinchrom D-Lites at a shop in Fortune Plaza on Ratchada. I paid about 28,000 baht for the kit, but it uses umbrellas, not softboxes. They work beautifully.

-Jeff