One critisizm I've heard of the cheaper lights is that the color temperature of the flash changes with the power output. Some claim it's as much as several hundred Kelvin. If this is true, I'd expect a more expensive system to have consistent flash color throughout the power range.
More power can be helpful depending on the accessories you're using. I was recently shooting through a 10 deg. grid and a dark green gel and had to use just about all the power my 320 w/s light had just to get f5.6 out of it. That was the first time I felt limited at all by my lights. The lesson being that certain accessories eat up a ton of your power, and it would have been nice to have something in reserve.
I guess if I'm spending the kind of cash that the high end systems cost, the things I'd be looking for would be: consistent flash color, very fast recycle times at full power, consistent output on every flash, very short flash duration (for freezing motion), absolute reliability, availability of any and every type of light modifier I could possibly dream of and they all need to be extremely easy to set up and remove, all connectors and switches and controls need to be of high quality and unlikely to break or wear out or become easily damaged even with repeated use and abuse.
That would be a start. That's a lot to ask, but some of the higher-end systems cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, which is a bunch to ask of me. Last thing is if I were to have some sort of failure with the system, there'd better be a service guy waiting at the door before I even begin to cuss. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]
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