Help with lighting

[greg20d]

I have a 420ex now and I am looking to get alien bees and I am wondering if the 420 will trigger them . forgive my stupid ? I have nevr used studio lights . I do outside shooting mostly and I am looking to change that . also what else do I need ????

[pilot1962]

Hey, Greg. I've started with 2X580 and ST-2 and it worked for a while...
Adding 2 WL1600 to a home studio made a huge imrovement and a progress and I still trigger all 4 strobes via ST-2 to the point where I needed to have a 580 away from a clear sight of view (background light in a very low position) and it still worked fine but monolights are stopped being able to trigger via optical slave...
Now I'm researching Power Wizards to trigger monolights directly and maybe 580 as a slave strobe...

[Wilt]

Any ETTL flash puts out preflash, so the AB would be falsely and prematurely be triggered by preflash. You must use ETTL-compatible flash on Manual mode on the flash unit, so no preflash is emitted, if you want to use optical trigger for the AB.

[greg20d]

that makes sense one more quick? I assume ab come with a sinc cord?

[pilot1962]

All ABs and WLs come with cords, question is - do you like bunch of wires all over the floor?