Firing Alien Bees with Sigma EF-500 DG Supers and Vise Versa.

[bfriend]

A few days back I seen a post on a forum and the person was asking how to fire a Sigma EF-500 DG Super flash with an Alien Bee strobe, unfortunately at the time I did not have time to post a response and now I can not find it. So hopefully by posting this here I can finally contribute to the photography community and help someone out.

Well here we go!

The Sigma flash can trigger the Alien Bees via the optical sensor that is built in them without any special settings or hardware. Just make sure that there is nothing plugged into the mini jack on the rear of the Alien Bee strobe head.


To trigger the Sigma EF-500 DG Super with the Alien Bee's there is a little bit of work on your behalf to pull this off, but it is very simple if you understand your Sigma flash.

1) you have to set it in the manual slave mode
2) Set it to (C0 SL)
3) Set the power settings and zoom to suit your needs.

Hope this helps out at least one person.

William Friend
bfriend@wi.rr.com

[hamm3r]

To trigger the Sigma EF-500 DG Super with the Alien Bee's there is a little bit of work on your behalf to pull this off, but it is very simple if you understand your Sigma flash.

1) you have to set it in the manual slave mode
2) Set it to (C0 SL)
3) Set the power settings and zoom to suit your needs.
Thanks for the post. I wasn't the person who asked the original question, but now I have a very newbie question.

I have the sigma flash and am considering buying an AB as a first step for setting up a home studio.

Please understand that I have NO experience of external strobes (although I have read all of the lighting stickies here over and over again).


1. Only ONE flash can connect to the camera, right? So if you are making the AB fire the SIGMA, does that mean that the AB is somehow physically connected to the camera?

2. Further, does that mean that the Sigma being in slave mode is NOT connected to the camera? Perhaps it's connect to a stand somewhere?

3. Under what circumstance would you want one to fire the other? Or should it not matter?

Thanks!

[Longwatcher]

1. Only ONE flash can connect to the camera, right? So if you are making the AB fire the SIGMA, does that mean that the AB is somehow physically connected to the camera?

2. Further, does that mean that the Sigma being in slave mode is NOT connected to the camera? Perhaps it's connect to a stand somewhere?

3. Under what circumstance would you want one to fire the other? Or should it not matter?

Thanks!

1. You can split the connection to have more then one flash directly triggered by the camera. AB has a 3-way splitter for this. However, you can (to the best of my knowledge) only have one sync cord plugged in at a time. I am not truly sure if it is possible to use a sync port (dedicated on the camera) and a hot sync (using the flash mount) at the same time. But normally you would not want to I would think.

2. I am guessing the sigma flash is on the camera and the ABs are running in slave mode. This is how it would work with Canon's 550EX which I have. But If the sigma has a flash slave mode I suppose it could work. Canon's have a IR signal for trigger so the ABs can't trigger the Canon flahses.

3. I would use the AB as your main and the Sigma as a fill light if possible. which has nothing to do with which triggers which, but which provides the main source of light and which provides a light to remove some (but not all of the shadows).

Hope that helps,

[Curtis N]

Some cameras have both a hotshoe and a PC socket and can simultaneously fire flash units connected to both. But the 300D has no PC socket, so in the absence of a hotshoe-mounted flash or radio trigger, you would need a PC cord-hotshoe adapter to connect the AB to the camera via wire.

The term "slave" in flash photography generally infers no wired connection to the camera. The Sigma EF-500 DG Super and most modern monolights including Alien Bees have built-in optical slave sensors that trigger the flash when it sees another flash.

If you are using the Sigma or any other E-TTL flash on the hotshoe as master to fire an optical slave, the master needs to be in manual mode to prevent premature firing of the slave from the E-TTL preflash.

[hamm3r]

Very helpful. Thank you both.