AlienBees are too Powerful!

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

- I learned something today

FlipsidE

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

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?

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

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.