Alienbees???

[dtalamo]

I am thinking of buying the alienbees B800 Lights but my question is for those that have bought the light stands and umbrellas. Are there better stands and umbrellas on the market for the price that alienbees charge for their Light Stands and Umbellas?
Here are alienbees prices:

1 LS3900 13' Heavy Duty Stands $70
1 U32SW 32-inch Silver/White Reversible Bounce Umbrella $20
1 U48TWB 48-inch Translucent White “Shoot-Thru” Umbrella $30

Should I look to purchase these from somewhere else or are these good stands and umbrellas?

Thanks for any input that you can give me

[OmahaAdam]

I use the 13' Heavy Duty stands here at work with B800s and they are pretty hefty. Stable, even with a softbox at 13' and they don't feel like they'll break/bend if I handle them in a less than, um, gentle manner. Makes me wish I'd have purchased a pair for myself instead of the normal stands I ended up getting. I also have the larger umbrellas at home and am happy with those as well.

[MJS]

I love mine. 2 of the 1600's with 48" Octobox and 2/48" silver/white umbrellas. I have the lightweight stands for use with the umbrellas and one of my older heavy boom stands with counterweight and casters for the octobox. I'll probably add a pair of 800's eventually, I'm using a portable shoe mount on a slave with Wescott Mini Lite dome for a hair light that rides on another medium weight boom.

[dtalamo]

Thanks Guys :thumbsup:

What do you think about this Studio setup:

1 - X1600 strobe from White Lightning that has 1/4 power to get down to 400 effective Ws
($480)
2 - B800 strobes ($560)
2 - LS3900 13' Heavy Duty Stands ($140)
1 - LS1100 Backlight Stand ($25)
1 - U32SW 32-inch Silver/White Reversible Bounce Umbrella ($20)
1 - U48TWB 48-inch Translucent White “Shoot-Thru” Umbrella ($30)

I substituted the 1 White Lightning X1600 instead of buying the 3 B800's, is this a wise choose?

Thanks Again

[OmahaAdam]

I substituted the 1 White Lightning X1600 instead of buying the 3 B800's, is this a wise choose?

I don't know! What are you shooting which prompted you to make that change? I assume you would use one B800 as a background strobe (if applicable) then the remaining B800 and the X1600 as fill/main respectively? You're spending an extra $200 to gain that extra stop of light output. If that's what you need then by all means, do it! Though, you could easily put that $200 cost difference toward a meter (quite useful for multiple light setups) or even remote triggers.

[dtalamo]

I plan on shooting Portraits or groups ups up to 6-12 people.
The only reason I was thinking about the White Lightning X1600 is that it is adjustable with 1/4 power to get down to 400 effective Ws. If this can be done with the B800, then I would not need the X1600. I am not too concerned about the extra output at least for now unless you think that I may need it for a group of 10-12.

Can the B800 be adjusted all the ways down to 400 effective Ws? I guess my question is that if I buy 3 B800's can there be a situation that I will have too much Light? I am using a Canon 5D that has an ISO setting as low as 50.

I am new to photography and I don't completely understand how strobes work as far as adjustments down.

Thanks Again

[OmahaAdam]

If you are worried about too much light, getting a more powerful light probably isn't the way to go. But to strictly answer your question; as the B800s start out at 800 "effective" w/s (where "effective" is a shoddy measurement anyway) if each stop-down halves the power you get down to 400 "effective" w/s by dropping only 1 stop. So, yes, you can get down to 400 effective w/s using a B800.

As far as my experience with the B800s are concerned, I've never ran into a situation where I declared an excess of light and scrapped a shoot. You say you are new to strobes, perhaps I can help with the basics you asked about...

Here's a crude light diagram of what I shot. I'm about 4' in front of my lens holding a remote for my camera. directly above the camera is a B800 w/softbox centered about 2ft above my eyes and angled down at me.



Now, what I've done is shoot 6 successive pictures with that single strobe, starting at full power and moving down 1 step at a time. To do so, I slide the white knob shown in the photo below from right to left.



So, pardoning the sub par model, see how these adjustments affect the photos. Each was shot at 1/125@f/9 100ISO on a 20D.


Full Power


-1


-2


-3


-4


-5


No Flash


So hopefully you get the general idea of how adjusting the light will affect photos such as this. Now adding two more lights into the equation tends to complicate things, but there's one basic rule I've learned that's helped immensely: Use your shutter to control ambient light and your aperture to control light from your strobe. I could reproduce the same series of shots above just by going from f/4-f/5.6-f/8-f/11-f/16-f/22 and keeping the strobe at one power setting (just like I retained the same aperture and adjusted flash power above). For my $.02, get the three B800s and put the $200 towards a meter and book about lighting.

[dtalamo]

Thanks Adam for your great tutorial!!!

3 B800's it is. :thumbsup: