Just before Christmas, I decided I wanted a new studio strobe. Scrolling eBay, I came across a Godox DP1000 iii for a decent price. The user selling stated it was new in box and unused so I bought it straight away. As it turns out, it was listed as a DP1000 iv (with the built-in modelling bulb, which it wasn't, but more annoyingly, the modelling bulb had an obvious sign of having a short. This means that not only was the unit definitely used, but I needed a modelling bulb too!

I was definitely a little irritated but for the price, there was bound to be something..

I knew I planned on using this DP1000 iii with my optical snoot and I'd be using the modelling bulb often for it. The standard modelling bulb runs at 150w, so pretty bright, but is also going to generate a decent amount of heat! To counter this I searched eBay for the same type of bulb in LED form and found a 30w version that would screw straight in! I purchased it and 3 days later it arrived!

I immediately screwed it into the DP1000 iii and it worked perfectly! And it was really bright too! I was set. I had a shoot coming up later that week and it would be a perfect chance to try the optical spot out with this new combination!

The bulb worked great in the optical spot and there was no issue! That is until I cranked the power..

The optical spots are designed to work with 600w heads mainly down to the heat dissipation. They get hot really quickly and it's best to shoot at slightly higher ISO and lower aperture to keep the flash power lower. This prevents as much heat from being built up and keeps everyone happy. I chose to ignore this info.

Instead, I ran my Godox DP1000iii at full power. And we shot about 50 frames, perhaps a second apart. I don't know why I imagined it would be fine. But I can assure you it was not. We had shot around 400 shots at vastly lower powers with no problem. But towards the end of these 50, the modelling light stopped working. It just seemed to have turned itself off. Then there was the smell.. A nice burning smell.. The strobe was still firing but there was something wrong. There was no fire or smoke so it wasn't dire.

We took the last few shots of the set and moved on. The optical spot would need time to cool before removing and investigating so it was placed to the side for the next half an hour. When it came time to finish, I removed the optical spot off the front of the strobe and it was still really warm. There was a little friction that never is normally present when removing the spot, and it soon became apparent the LED modelling bulb had melted, like fully melted onto the flash tube! There was residue on the inside of the strobe head and the inside of the optical spot too. Clearly, the flash tube had sprayed LED modelling bulb around!

The scene I was met with after optical spot removal

Inside of my optical spot

Luckily the modelling bulb was relatively easy to remove from the flash tube, albeit I need to get a new flash tube as half of it is now black. For the rest of the modelling bulb, I had to very carefully unscrew the remainder from the DP1000 iii as it was stuck!

I'm assuming a standard modelling bulb wouldn't have had this issue, but I'm still tempted to try my luck again with another LED modelling bulb.. Perhaps..

Having said this, the main reason all of this happened was that I decided to use a 1000w strobe head, on full power, consecutively, in an enclosed optical spot. That really isn't a good idea by any means!

LED modelling bulb aftermath