Can I use my 430EX with my Alien Bees?

I have one Alien Bees strobe and one 430EX. Is there a way they will play nice together in a wireless setup on my Rebel XT? Hope this makes sense.

What do you mean by wireless. If you are going to use the flash off the 430 to set off the Alien bees you are going to run into problems. The only way is to set it on manual. If you use it on any other setting the Alien Bees will go off with the preflash, leaving your picture underexposed. I ran into this problem before and this forum helped me out. You might try searching this forum. I now either set my camera on manual or I attatch a sync cord. However the Rebel does not come with a sync cord plug so you have to buy an adapter to place on your hot shoe, but then you can't use you 430. I hope this makes sense. I can not think clearly.

Yeah I have the hotshoe adapter on the XT to connect to the alienbee via sync cord, but soon I will set it up in a wireless configuration. I just thought maybe there was an easy way to include the 430ex into a wireless setup similar to the amazing looking diagram below.

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You can use them in an optical slave configuration. Get yourself a Hot Shoe Flash PC Sync Adapter to fire the 430EX from the PC Sync Adapter on your camera and let the Bee fire optically (they have built-in sensors). Th 430EX will have to be in Manual (no ETTL!) for it to work but you can do it. You'll also need a standard male to female PC cord because the Bee has a different connector.

Couldn't you use a synch cord to the AB and use the 430 on ETTL? The AB wouldn't fire with the prefire in that case, would it? (I have a 30D, so I can use the synch cord) And in the above (very professional) diagram, couldn't you use the AB wireless setup to fire?

I don't know if anybody has found an optical slave that will operate a Speedlite properly. Many folks report that they have to turn the Speedlite off and back on between shots when using them on an optical slave.

A Speedlite attached to the camera can trigger other flash units which have optical slaves, but both the camera and the Speedlite MUST be in fully manual mode. The down side of this is that the Speedlite has to be either on the camera's hotshoe or connected to it via a Shoe Cord 2 or (possibly) the ST-E2 transmitter (very expensive for this purpose).

Once you're mixing strobes and flashes ETTL goes out the window. You're now working full manual, as you should be. If you operate a Speedlite in manual then it works just like any other strobe in your setup. You meter and adjust manually, having full control and giving the camera and flash none of the control.

As long as your 430EX is in Manual and you can trigger it on camera or off camera with a sync cord then your Alien Bees can fire from the internal optical slave trigger. You can now add more AB's or flashes that have optical triggers and everything other than the 'Master' 430EX is wireless.

OK, so I get it. Even tho you could trip the AB through the sync cord, running the 430 in ETTL wouldn't provide compensation for the AB presence. So you'd have to compensate for it manually... in which case you could do everything manually from the get go. Would there be ANY benefit from using ETTL and adjusting from there? Or just simpler to run manual from the beginning?

NorCalAl wrote in post #3314391
OK, so I get it. Even tho you could trip the AB through the sync cord, running the 430 in ETTL wouldn't provide compensation for the AB presence. So you'd have to compensate for it manually... in which case you could do everything manually from the get go. Would there be ANY benefit from using ETTL and adjusting from there? Or just simpler to run manual from the beginning?

In my opinion, if you are using studio lights then you should absolutely forget ETTL automation with any Speedlites being thrown into the mix. Total manual control is the only practical way to combine the two types of lighting equipment.

Although many folks do successfully combine Speedlites (or their clones) and studio lighting in one way or another, I much prefer to use my Speedlite only for totally portable use and when in a studio environment, put the Speedlite away and stick to studio type lighting only. Following this system certainly reduces the problems in making everything work properly.