AlienBees are too Powerful!

[minatophase3]

I just got my AB800's last night and found out that they are too powerful for the size of my studio. Has anyone experienced this or am I doing something wrong?

Here is the setup I used.

Large white roll of paper for background (9 feet wide)
1 - AB800 with 48" brolly box
1 - AB800 with 48" silver/white umbrella

I was shooting in a double car garage which would be very typical of the size of studio I will be using. I will also be in slightly smaller areas as I plan on taking the Bee's on location to people's houses and will have to setup in a living room or something similar.

I had the AB800 with brolly box about 6 feet away from the subject and the AB800 with silver/white umbrella about 6 feet away as well.

From those distances, even with the lights turned down as far as they wold go, I needed to shoot at 1/160 and f8 to get a decent exposure. This would really limit my creative ability to blur the background with larger (ie. 1.8, 2.0, etc) aperatures.

Please help, am I doing something wrong or is this just a reality of working in a small stuido area? I would really like the ability to use the full range of aperature settings my lenses offer.

Right now, they are boxed up and ready to be exchanged for a couple of AB400's. Any advice is appreciated.

Tim

[FlipsidE]

Hmmm....in the Lighting for Glamour Photography book I was reading, the shutter speeds were always quite fast even with the narrow aperture. What settings is your Sekonic meter telling you to use?

FlipsidE

[minatophase3]

Hmmm....in the Lighting for Glamour Photography book I was reading, the shutter speeds were always quite fast even with the narrow aperture. What settings is your Sekonic meter telling you to use?

FlipsidE

The Sekonic is telling me to use 1/160 and between 5.6 & 8.0 aperature. I don't mind using the faster shutter speed, what I am concerned is that if I want to get a little more creative and shoot a model at say aperature 2.0, there doesn't seem to be a way to do it without moving the lights back quite a bit farther. That wouldn't be an issue if I had unlimited room, but I know I won't.

I have always read that you should get the most power as you can always dial them down, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Again, maybe I am doing something wrong.

Tim

[FlipsidE]

hmmmm...I honestly don't know then. I would figure the flash meter would tell you to use a higher shutter speed. Give it a shot at 1/250 and see how it comes out. I'm just curious to see what happens with a faster shutter speed.

FlipsidE

[minatophase3]

hmmmm...I honestly don't know then. I would figure the flash meter would tell you to use a higher shutter speed. Give it a shot at 1/250 and see how it comes out. I'm just curious to see what happens with a faster shutter speed.

FlipsidE

I did try a faster shutter speed, but cannot exceed 1/200 (D60). Even at 1/200 I needed to use 5.6. Again, this may be just the way it is with lights as I have never used them before.

Tim

[Jon]

Shutter speed shouldn't make too much difference for the flashes as long as they can sync. They're only producing a brief burst of light, and you need to keep your shutter speed within the X-sync capabilities for the flash in question (Canon claims only 1/60 sec. for non-Canon EX flashes), but otherwise shutter speed will only impact the background (available light) exposure. Your primary controls for studio flash are flash output, shutter speed, and flash-subject distance.

[slin100]

Your primary controls for studio flash are flash output, shutter speed, and flash-subject distance.
Jon, I think you meant flash output, aperture, and flash-subject distance.

If the flash is too strong and you cannot move them back, one option is to use neutral-density gels to absorb some of the light put out by the flash.

[Quinn Porter]

Changing the shutter speed is not going to make a difference unless you have a good deal of ambient light. Rather than exchange the 800s for 400s, I would use a neutral density filter on the lens or on the lights. The Alien Bees set of ND filters is only $22. This lets you retain the power in case you ever need it... and you will.

[minatophase3]

Changing the shutter speed is not going to make a difference unless you have a good deal of ambient light. Rather than exchange the 800s for 400s, I would use a neutral density filter on the lens or on the lights. The Alien Bees set of ND filters is only $22. This lets you retain the power in case you ever need it... and you will.

Can the ND filters be used with an umbrella, brolly box or softbox? I bought the color filters and it doesn't look like they can be used with the attachments on the lights.

Tim

[FlipsidE]

Changing the shutter speed is not going to make a difference unless you have a good deal of ambient light. Rather than exchange the 800s for 400s, I would use a neutral density filter on the lens or on the lights. The Alien Bees set of ND filters is only $22. This lets you retain the power in case you ever need it... and you will.

- I learned something today :)

FlipsidE

[Jon]

Your primary controls for studio flash are flash output, shutter speed, and flash-subject distance.
Jon, I think you meant flash output, aperture, and flash-subject distance.

If the flash is too strong and you cannot move them back, one option is to use neutral-density gels to absorb some of the light put out by the flash.

Right you are. Dunno where my mind was, since I'd just finished saying shutter speed didn't matter!

[DaveG]

I just got my AB800's last night and found out that they are too powerful for the size of my studio. Has anyone experienced this or am I doing something wrong?

Here is the setup I used.

Large white roll of paper for background (9 feet wide)
1 - AB800 with 48" brolly box
1 - AB800 with 48" silver/white umbrella

I was shooting in a double car garage which would be very typical of the size of studio I will be using. I will also be in slightly smaller areas as I plan on taking the Bee's on location to people's houses and will have to setup in a living room or something similar.

I had the AB800 with brolly box about 6 feet away from the subject and the AB800 with silver/white umbrella about 6 feet away as well.

From those distances, even with the lights turned down as far as they wold go, I needed to shoot at 1/160 and f8 to get a decent exposure. This would really limit my creative ability to blur the background with larger (ie. 1.8, 2.0, etc) aperatures.

Please help, am I doing something wrong or is this just a reality of working in a small stuido area? I would really like the ability to use the full range of aperature settings my lenses offer.

Right now, they are boxed up and ready to be exchanged for a couple of AB400's. Any advice is appreciated.

Tim

As everyone else will tell you the shutterspeed is not of any importance in your flash exposure unless you have a tremendous amount of ambient light.

More to the point is the power your flashes are putting out. Your 800 is about 320 watt/second flash and I can get my 400 w/s flash down to f5.6 with ISO 100 without any trouble at all, and that's at those distances into an umbrella at half power. Your 800 will let you go down to 1/32nd power - my ancient 400w/s Multiblitz has only full and half power - so that should be using very little power or you are using an extrordinary ISO like 1600.

Have you used the 1/32nd power setting? What is your ISO? If you somehow ARE at 1/32 power the Alien Bee 400's will only give you one stop less light since they are 160 w/s.

[minatophase3]

As everyone else will tell you the shutterspeed is not of any importance in your flash exposure unless you have a tremendous amount of ambient light.

More to the point is the power your flashes are putting out. Your 800 is about 320 watt/second flash and I can get my 400 w/s flash down to f5.6 with ISO 100 without any trouble at all, and that's at those distances into an umbrella at half power. Your 800 will let you go down to 1/32nd power - my ancient 400w/s Multiblitz has only full and half power - so that should be using very little power or you are using an extrordinary ISO like 1600.

Have you used the 1/32nd power setting? What is your ISO? If you somehow ARE at 1/32 power the Alien Bee 400's will only give you one stop less light since they are 160 w/s.

I was using ISO 100 and I did try turning them down as far as they would go. Could it be the materials that the umbrella and brolly box are made of? I could see how different umbrellas would reflect light differently. What sort of umbrellas do you use?

[imagesense]

The ISO is important. I always use ISO 100 with my Bee studio setup.
I use one 800 and one 400 with softbox & umbrella and I have not had any trouble adjusting the lights.

Lou

[DaveG]

As everyone else will tell you the shutterspeed is not of any importance in your flash exposure unless you have a tremendous amount of ambient light.

More to the point is the power your flashes are putting out. Your 800 is about 320 watt/second flash and I can get my 400 w/s flash down to f5.6 with ISO 100 without any trouble at all, and that's at those distances into an umbrella at half power. Your 800 will let you go down to 1/32nd power - my ancient 400w/s Multiblitz has only full and half power - so that should be using very little power or you are using an extrordinary ISO like 1600.

Have you used the 1/32nd power setting? What is your ISO? If you somehow ARE at 1/32 power the Alien Bee 400's will only give you one stop less light since they are 160 w/s.

I was using ISO 100 and I did try turning them down as far as they would go. Could it be the materials that the umbrella and brolly box are made of? I could see how different umbrellas would reflect light differently. What sort of umbrellas do you use?

If you can get f8 out of two Alien Bee 800's at 1/32 power @ ISO 100 into an umbrella, then I want to buy those flashes! Please check again to make sure that you don't have them at half power, while you're thinking that it's lower. There is just not enough power in these things to give you the kind of output you describe.

Now there is a chance that the power setting knob is not actually changing the power settings as you change from 1 to 1/2 to 1/4 and so forth, but that seems unlikely due to the fact that you have two of them.

[minatophase3]

I bought the 4 channel wired remote and I know that I had the controls slid all the way over to the left which greatly reduced the output of the lights.

I did not mess with the settings on the lights themselves as I assumed that the wired remote would over ride those. Maybe that is where I am going wrong. Does anyone have experience with the wired remote?

I will also double check my ISO settings when I get home to verify it was set at ISO 100.

Tim

[daveh]

I will also double check my ISO settings when I get home to verify it was set at ISO 100.

That seems like a likely culprit. With a single B800, just 3 feet from the subject using a softbox, I'm reading f3.2 at ISO 100.

[Longwatcher]

A couple of things from my experience.

Distance is a big factor. While mine are AB1600s I have them about 8 feet away for the soft box and 10 feet for the umbrella both from the model with background about another 3 feet behind. I have mine set at 1/16th So equivilant of AB800 at 1/8th. I often have problems getting apertures of wider the f4.0 at 1/180 or 1/250 which is what I shoot at with my 10D. I had to move mine as far back as possible to get that flexability.

Also note, while not sure about wired remote, the wireless remote caused me to have an upper limit of 1/180 where as a sync cord and flash slaving the rest works at 1/250 fairly well (some darkening at bottom sometimes), but no shutter cutoff.

I suspect with AB800 at 6 feet I would end up running them at 1/32nd power and have similiar problems.

Something to try is to bounce the light off a reflector, this will have the effect of increasing the distance the light travels. When I need sharper DOF, I usually shut down one light and bounce the other off a reflector as fill.

Just a thought, although I know the ABs are more powerful then I thought they would be.

[nat869]

I just recently got two AB 800's like you did. In my first test shoot to try them out, I used the AB shoot thru umbrella, photoflex soft box and a 250 w/s strobe shining down as a hair light. My 2 AB's were about 5 feet from my subject. At half power on all the units, I was able to shoot at 160 shutter speed at f8 aperture, at 100 film speed. I had no ambient light as it was at night, just the overhead incandescent and I shot with the nifty fifty. I used my Sekonic L358 to check the settings. Flashes were triggered using cords, someday I will get wireless.

[minatophase3]

I will also double check my ISO settings when I get home to verify it was set at ISO 100.

That seems like a likely culprit. With a single B800, just 3 feet from the subject using a softbox, I'm reading f3.2 at ISO 100.

I just had my wife check the ISO settings and it was set to ISO 200 :shock: . So, that makes me feel a little better. Anyone have any idea on how much extra light that would allow in? Does it allow twice as much as ISO 100?

Tim

[cmM]

that's weird.... I have the same strobe and I get decent exposures at 1/160 f/4 - f/2.8 with the flash @ about 1/8 power (strobe into a softbox about 10ft away). I only use one strobe, 1 reflector, and the 550EX for fill light.

[cmM]

I will also double check my ISO settings when I get home to verify it was set at ISO 100.

That seems like a likely culprit. With a single B800, just 3 feet from the subject using a softbox, I'm reading f3.2 at ISO 100.

I just had my wife check the ISO settings and it was set to ISO 200 :shock: . So, that makes me feel a little better. Anyone have any idea on how much extra light that would allow in? Does it allow twice as much as ISO 100?

Tim
there you go! :)

yep, twice as much

[DaveG]

I will also double check my ISO settings when I get home to verify it was set at ISO 100.

That seems like a likely culprit. With a single B800, just 3 feet from the subject using a softbox, I'm reading f3.2 at ISO 100.

I just had my wife check the ISO settings and it was set to ISO 200 :shock: . So, that makes me feel a little better. Anyone have any idea on how much extra light that would allow in? Does it allow twice as much as ISO 100?

Tim

Yes that's one stop. The difference between f4 & f5.6; or 1/125 & 1/250. That still won't make all that much difference. It's exactly the same diference by the way as the Alien Bee 400 compared to the 800.

But do your adjustments ON THE FLASH. That way you'll know that you have selected 1/16 power (or whatever) for sure.

[Headcase650]

We are also considering getting some monolights after tax time, probably 2 900ws lights with umbrellas and heavy duty air cushoned stands. Our only lighting experiance has been with hot lights. We have been looking at the Alien Bees and the Flash Point II that Adorama sells. Our studio is a 16x12' dining room. My understanding is that I could trip a set of monolights with with the 550ex set on manual with a shutter no faster than 1/200th second. So my thought was, point the flash straight up with the catch light panel slid out,set the 550EX to manual, set the FEC as low as it would go then set up my main light and my fill at less power. Fire off a test shot to get a reading from a flash meter. then shoot accordingly. If this is correct, great, if not please tell me as I need educated befor making the purchase.

A few other questions.

If the room is lit by normal tungusten incodesent lights, (a couple 100w light bulbs in the ceiling and some on a ceiling fan behind the camera) will this affect my photos in any way, of will the flash be so bright it would drown out the yellows that tungustens put off?

I have a Sunpac Auto 355AF Thyristor flash gun just sitting around that we use to use on an old canon body that had only TTL metering. Off the camera I dont think is adjustable in any way, it just fires full power. Is there any type of flash tripped slave shoe that we could use to make this flash a background light. I was thinkg when all the others go off this one would also to get some light behind the subject. If so would you mind posting some links or tell me if this is a bad idea.

What is the differance between air cushened heavy duty stands and just the regular heavy duty stands?

If I want to use a shutter faster than 1/200th would high speed sync work , or do the pulses throw off the timing?

I hope I didnt hi-jack this thread, but sense studio flash is the topic I didnt think you all would mind.

Thanks,

Adrian

[DaveG]

We are also considering getting some monolights after tax time, probably 2 900ws lights with umbrellas and heavy duty air cushoned stands. Our only lighting experiance has been with hot lights. We have been looking at the Alien Bees and the Flash Point II that Adorama sells. Our studio is a 16x12' dining room. My understanding is that I could trip a set of monolights with with the 550ex set on manual with a shutter no faster than 1/200th second. So my thought was, point the flash straight up with the catch light panel slid out,set the 550EX to manual, set the FEC as low as it would go then set up my main light and my fill at less power. Fire off a test shot to get a reading from a flash meter. then shoot accordingly. If this is correct, great, if not please tell me as I need educated befor making the purchase.

A few other questions.

If the room is lit by normal tungusten incodesent lights, (a couple 100w light bulbs in the ceiling and some on a ceiling fan behind the camera) will this affect my photos in any way, of will the flash be so bright it would drown out the yellows that tungustens put off?

I have a Sunpac Auto 355AF Thyristor flash gun just sitting around that we use to use on an old canon body that had only TTL metering. Off the camera I dont think is adjustable in any way, it just fires full power. Is there any type of flash tripped slave shoe that we could use to make this flash a background light. I was thinkg when all the others go off this one would also to get some light behind the subject. If so would you mind posting some links or tell me if this is a bad idea.

What is the differance between air cushened heavy duty stands and just the regular heavy duty stands?

If I want to use a shutter faster than 1/200th would high speed sync work , or do the pulses throw off the timing?

I hope I didnt hi-jack this thread, but sense studio flash is the topic I didnt think you all would mind.

Thanks,

Adrian

I don't like hot lights. They are fairly weak, yet incredibly hot and dangerous. A pair of inexpensive Alien Bees would give you a lot more power and nowhere near the danger. The easiest way to trip them is with a synch cord to one and an optical slave on the other. Low tech and works great in a private studio.

If you do use the 550 as a trigger, set it to Manual, set the power setting to 1/32 and rotate the flash head so that its aimed behind you. This should trigger the slaves in the monolights and won't affect the exposure.

You do need to get a flash meter to set up ratios with studio strobes. If you check some threads I explained how you do this. If you can't find them leave me a message and I'll write back.

Ambient light will affect your image if it's close to the flash exposure settings. If the ambient light is four stops below what you are asking your flashes to output then there should be no effect at all. But when it gets close to the same exposure good AND bad things can happen.

First the bad. If the exposure you are using with a flash is 1/60 @ f5.6 and that happens to be the ambient light in the room, you are basically making a double exposure with one shot. The first exposure is with the flash. The second is with the ambient light. The ambient light, if it's incandescent lighting, is yellow; so you might end up with a bit of a colour cast. 1/60 of a second doesn't freeze action very well so you might get some subject movement in the image as well. Then you superimpose the flash shot on top of this. The flash shot is daylight balanced so there's no colour cast. Electronic flash is also very very brief. On Manual most electronic flash's "flash duration" is about 1/700 of a second. On automatic setttings the duration will be much shorter, in the 1/10,000 of a second (or shorter) range. The flash will then freeze the action. When you look at the image you will see a nice short "blue" image with a yellow ghost image with visible movement where the subject moved.

Now the good news is that you can use this technique to give you some very useful shots. I use this at weddings all the time. Put the camera on a tripod so there's no camera movement. Brief the subject to stand very still and not to move after the flash pop. Meter the ambient light (say 1/15 @ f5.6). Set your camera to that and shoot. You still get the "double exposure" but since the subject didn't move you see no ghosting. You also don't get any flash fall off - that's the black behind most flash shots since the ambient light fills it in. This technique has many names & I call it dragging the shutter or inside fill flash. It works great for this. It sucks if you try it when the B&G are walking down the aisle.

You could probably get a hotshoe looking slave that the Sunpak flash could slide into. The you need to get it onto a small stand of some kind. I use Minolta table top tripods for that kkind of thing.

You cannot use shutterspeed faster than 1/200 with a 10D and conventional flashes. If you do you will shoot "off synch" and ruin the image. It's the way that the shutter actually works. The shutter is made up of two curtains. The first one fires and goes across the folcal plane. When it gets to the end the second curtain fires and closes the focal plane. Now that's what happens at shutterspeeds below the synch speed - 1/200 in the 10D, 1/250 in the 20D. At speeds faster than 1/200 the first curtain fires and then BEFORE it reaches the end of the focal plane the second one fires and chases it. As the shutterspeeds get shorter the opening of this "slit" will become smaller and at 1/4000 a tiny slit will fly across the focal plane. If you use a conventional flash above the synch speed you are photographing part of the shutter too, and this sucks.

Now there is a "high speed" synch available with the 550EX and is obviously possible, but it produces a fairly weak flash output. All those mini pops are powered by the same capacitor so that only way you can get two pops is if they are no more than half the full power, right? So many, many pops are perhaps 1/16 or 1/32 of full power, which is weak indeed. So you subject better be really close.

And on top of this it's very hard on your flash. Pop, pop, pop times 50 and you've got a very hot little flash tube. I can remember taking a Metz flash, touching the flash face to a piece of newsprint and after the flash was fired watched a small bit of smoke curl to the ceiling! There is real heat coming out of these things. Not enough to burn you but enough to ruin the flash if you aren't careful.

Air cushioned stands do what they imply. If the aren't completely tightened and the tightener fails, it will lower the stands slowly as it pumps out air. The "heavy duty" stands will just collapse and the jar from the sudden stop could damage the monolight or cause the stand to fall over.

[Headcase650]

DaveG,

Thank you so very much, that helped me a ton.

I dont believe the Digital Rebel has a place to plug a sync cord into, so I guess I'll use the 550. Ill need to do some research on the hotshoe slave also.

I know the hotlights are hot and are a pain sometimes but we have gotten some awesome results using them. With the two 500w with umbrells and the 100w light on the ceiling that we use they arent super bright so we set the iso to 400 and get around 1/200th shutter at f 2.8 or 3.5. Currently we are using the 50/1.8 and the 28/2.8 for all our in studio shots. If we are doing a kid that just doesnt ant to stand still we will under expose by a stop or maybe a little more and pring it back in photoshop.

Another question, How long do flash tubes last, Ive noticed that they start arounf 50 bucks and just go up. Ive made my $6 500w photofloods last almost a year LOL.

[DaveG]

DaveG,

Thank you so very much, that helped me a ton.

I dont believe the Digital Rebel has a place to plug a sync cord into, so I guess I'll use the 550. Ill need to do some research on the hotshoe slave also.

I know the hotlights are hot and are a pain sometimes but we have gotten some awesome results using them. With the two 500w with umbrells and the 100w light on the ceiling that we use they arent super bright so we set the iso to 400 and get around 1/200th shutter at f 2.8 or 3.5. Currently we are using the 50/1.8 and the 28/2.8 for all our in studio shots. If we are doing a kid that just doesnt ant to stand still we will under expose by a stop or maybe a little more and pring it back in photoshop.

Another question, How long do flash tubes last, Ive noticed that they start arounf 50 bucks and just go up. Ive made my $6 500w photofloods last almost a year LOL.

You can get a Wein Safe synch that slides into your hotshoe and provides a safe (duh) synch terminal.

Flash tubes will last for many years as long as they aren't abused. I've had my Multiblitz monolights for about 10 years now and they were at least 20 years old THEN! And I still haven't changed a flash tube!

[minatophase3]

I am happy to report that the AB800's will be staying right where they are. :D

When I got home I set them up again, this time with the ISO on the camera turned to 100 and I was able to get some nice shots, even at 2.8 aperature!!! I had one AB800 with the 48" brolly box about 4 feet away from my wife and was still able to use 2.8, so I am convinced that these will work very nicely!!

I also turned the silver/white umbrella to the white side and that seemed to help some also.

Thanks to everyone for their guidance on this issue. I think I would have been very disappointed it I exchanged them for the AB400's.

Now, I will do my best to post some pictures this weekend!

Tim

[chris.bailey]

where you set the brolly in relation to the flash tube can make a big difference. You really want the flash to fill the brolly, too close and it can make hotspots in the reflected light, too far and you are spilling some backwards.

Though my units are Bowens, I found that it took a while for the flash output to become consistent, kind of like a burn in period. that may also be a factor.