DRebel and Alien Bees...

[MrKickalot]

I set my B800 up for the first time seriously last night and put my homemade softbox(painted white inside with thin white fabric for a diffuser) on it and was playing with feathering the light to keep the background darker... to make a long story short.. the B800's flash tube has a color temperature of 5600K. My white balancing on my DRebel was set to flash. When I put the RAW file into CS it came up at 6650K. Am I doing something wrong or am I just ignorant to how this works? Does it matter that the modelling light was on? Enlighten me please!

Thanks!

[FlipsidE]

A shot in the dark on this one, but maybe try manually setting the white balance?

FlipsidE

[cmM]

Doesn't matter if you shoot RAW.

Set your AB to daylight.... that should be around 5600k

[retro]

I set my B800 up for the first time seriously last night and put my homemade softbox(painted white inside with thin white fabric for a diffuser) on it and was playing with feathering the light to keep the background darker... to make a long story short.. the B800's flash tube has a color temperature of 5600K. My white balancing on my DRebel was set to flash. When I put the RAW file into CS it came up at 6650K. Am I doing something wrong or am I just ignorant to how this works? Does it matter that the modelling light was on? Enlighten me please!

Thanks!

I am considering the alien bees setup with my D-rebel, but the snag is that hookup to the camera. I know the 20D has a port for the sync, but what are you using to trigger the stobes?

[Bruce Foreman]

I am considering the alien bees setup with my D-rebel, but the snag is that hookup to the camera. I know the 20D has a port for the sync, but what are you using to trigger the stobes?

Two ways to go here. Because the Alien Bees trigger voltage is not over 6v you can use a standard hot shoe adapter (hot shoe to PC tip), no protection such as provided by the Wein Safe-Sync (needed if the external flash trigger voltage is higher than 6v.) is needed with the AB's.

Second method (and what I use) is to put any of the dedicated ETTL units made for Canon (I use a small Sunpak) in the hot shoe, set it to manual and select one of the lower power manual settings, tilt the head to fire away from the subject and let that trigger the Alien Bee units. If you have no sync cord plugged in to you AB unit it automatically is in slave mode.

Bruce Foreman

[retro]

Thanks for the info Bruce. I really appreciate you taking the time to explain that!

[cmM]

I use that second method as well (550EX in manual mode), but it bother the crap out of me when I have to shoot vertically... so I just shoot upside down.

[snibbetsj]

If you use the flash WB setting on the camera it will set the WB to Canon's flashs' temperature, which I believe is about 6K or so. Daylight is around 5400-5800 depending. If you set to daylight it will be better. But, you really should just import RAW files and set the temp to 5600.

I have heard that the 10D and the Drebel (300D) actually do perform some processing on the raw files based on WB. I don't know if it's true or not. It wouldn't hurt to set the WB as close as possible for the shot anyway.

You might look at using a gray or white card and doing a custom WB, that way there won't be any question.

:)

[Fido aka James Smith]

I would think the paint and fabric used in the construction of your SB would explain the diff in temp. Also, is there any other light source than the strobes that is mixing ? I would get a calibration target and white card , then you will be dead on , no matter what ....... and it saves lots of time later.