Firing AlienBees without cords (Question)

OK..............I know that alienbees have a built-in device where it can be triggered wirelessly............​If I decide to purchase a radio transmitter to fire them wirelessly, do I have to purchase the receiver too?? or is that redundant.

Would appreciate any help......

Oh.......and if anybody has any suggestions on what trasmitter/receiver to get, that would be appreciated.

THANKS!!!

Ro1

You need one pair-receiver and transmitter. You hook up one receiver to one light and set the others to slave. The slaves on most monolights respond to visible light, not radio waves. (Unless you buy lights with Pocket Wizard receivers built in.)

Usually trasmitters come with at least on reciever. The Alien bees do not have a built in receiver. But you could just use you on camera flash to trigger them. This can be done, I have done it with white lightnings. Press and hold the * button to fire the preflash, then shot away. Yep! it works. No need to purchase wireless setup. At least you can save for it.

BTW, White Lightning = Alien Bees. Paul C Buff owns both companies. Alien bees are meant for beginners.

THANKS!!!

And great tip on that * button.

I guess I have to fork up the cash to shoot wirelessly.....D**n it!!!

.........

Ro1

Yep! But in the mean time. While you save, use the *. Fun part is you can rapidly press it and the aliens will fire as long as there is a charge.

Do you already have the aliens. I'm trying to decide between the AB's or WL's

davidfig wrote:
Yep! But in the mean time. While you save, use the *. Fun part is you can rapidly press it and the aliens will fire as long as there is a charge.

Do you already have the aliens. I'm trying to decide between the AB's or WL's

Yup.......got the 800 and 400.............they are pretty good. I only bought them cuz that's what they had on my studio class.

Ro1

A few notes:

- The big advantage to radio remotes over pocket wizard with the AB lights is ability to adjust the light from the transmitter. Other then that I would recommend the Pocket Wizard until AB comes out with the new version of the Radio Remotes. But that is one big advantage in my mind.

- You technically only need one transmitter for up to I think 16 recievers (I know I can do 4), however take into account backup needs as of course the one annoying failure I have had with ABs has been the transmitter (although I was able to fix it myself).

- Although one transmitter/reciever pair can in theory trigger all the lights if they are in slave mode, from a practical standpoint occasionally it is best to have all on direct control versus slave mode as the slave trigger has to see enough light to go off and I occasionally I have problems because of orientation of lights.

- I have found that up to a point you can sync cord to one light and split the signal to a transmitter at that point which sends the signal to the reciever which can be split to two lights. There is a limit before this starts breaking down of about 3 lights in the chain at most, but it works. The catch is any adjustments made by transmitter affect all cable-linked strobes down range from the reciever.

The big advantage to wireless is no wires to trip over or get in the picture.
The advantage to radio controled remotes is more reliability over slave flash
The nice advantage of AB Radio Remotes over Pocket Wizards is ability to control the lights from the transmitter.

Just my experience with my currently 6 ABs and Radio Remote Set over the past 3 years.

Pocket Wizards are radio remotes. They have a big advantage over optical devices as they won't be tripped by other people's flashes. Some people put a PW receiver on each light for that very reason.

Thanks Longwatcher...........​...

I might end up getting the cheaper versions of radio remotes........B&H has speedtron and wein?? I wish I can afford the PW but they seem a bit much.

Ro1

What Longwatcher was referring to is the AlienBees radio remote package. With that package, you can remotely adjust the lighting level of all the lights in the system that have receivers attached to them. This remote adjustment cannot be done with Pocket Wizards. All the Pocket Wizards can do (though many say they do it better) is remotely trigger the lights.

Thanks for the info.

I bought a cheap one(wireless transmiter) off e-bay for 30 bucks and it works perfect. Someone on here though said you can tape off some of the pins on a ST-E2 to fire them.

Read this https://photography-on-the.net …&highlight=goin​g+wireless

Depending on where you are using them you might just get by with the optical slaves built into the Alien Bees. Your on-camera flash would have to be set to manual and you would have to meter the light - but you will be doing that anyway. If you don't have to worry about others tripping them this is a perfect solution.

I tried that and it didn't work with the ste2......or I would've been set.

Ro1