I'm a little confused, lol.

So i would like to start putting together a lighting setup, probably alien bees or if white lightning but my question is about power. I cant remeber where i read it on here but the question was brought up about one being too powerfull, can a strobe that you can adjust the power down on realy be too powerfull? I always assumed you should buy the most powerfull strobe you can budget for and that would give you the most flexability. Is that wrong?

I just went through this situation myself. I was going to get 2 alienbees and didnt know what I wanted. I was thinking eitehr a 400 and 800, 2 800's or an 800 and a 1600. My stydio area will be fairly small(12x15 with 8' ceilings) at the most...

I decided to go with an AB400, and an AB800. I did a shoot this past weekend in a similar size room, and was shooting f2.8-F8 with my AB400, and I dont think I ever went over 1/2 power. I think I am happy with my choice.

kensei wrote in post #9771884
So i would like to start putting together a lighting setup, probably alien bees or if white lightning but my question is about power. I cant remeber where i read it on here but the question was brought up about one being too powerfull, can a strobe that you can adjust the power down on realy be too powerfull? I always assumed you should buy the most powerfull strobe you can budget for and that would give you the most flexability. Is that wrong?

Yes it can be too powerful. Especially if you are using it inside. An alien bee 1600 with a shoot through umbrella can yield you f16 of more at 10 ft with iso 100. Generally more light than you need for home studio applications. You can turn them down but at the very bottom end of their power curve you begin to get color shifts. The main benefit of all that power is working outside where you want to make the mid day sun appear like twilight. Unless you are doing a lot of that sort of work consider getting an ab800, or the white lightning. The white lightnings are designed differently so that you can turn off half of the capacitors to make it run at lower power without the color shift.

Yes they can be too powerful if you like to shoot at 2.8 or lower. For portraits
low power is ideal. I often shoot at under 7.5 watt seconds at F2 with a two stop beauty dish and
grid attached. That's the minimum on my 500 w/s lights. My next light will be a 250 w/s so I will have the flexibility to go even lower. I rarely dial them all the way up unless I am doing macro work and need super power.

1600 is way way too much unless you are shooting buildings, cars, or airplanes. You can't just dial them down to infinity. There is going to be a range. Probably 5-6 stops.

Definitely, my 100W/s flash unit is adjustable down to 5.7W/s and I've done some shots last week where I still had too much light at 5.7W/s indoors. If you plan on mainly shooting in an environment where you control the ambient light (indoors) you'll need something that can go low.

That said, reducing power is always a possibility, there's Neutral Density gels, modifiers, all sorts of options to reduce the minimum power setting further. Going higher than your strobes rating is virtually impossible (theres exceptions with some very expensive modifiers for some high profile brands, but those limit possibilities in themselves).

i would like to be able to shoot indoors and out, as well as automotive photography. I looked on white lightning's site and it says the 1600 has a 1/4 power setting... would that be a viable option for what i would like to do?

kensei wrote in post #9778615
i would like to be able to shoot indoors and out, as well as automotive photography. I looked on white lightning's site and it says the 1600 has a 1/4 power setting... would that be a viable option for what i would like to do?

The white lightning is different than the AB in that it has a setting where you can essentially turn off half the capacitors giving it a 9 stop range meaning you can turn it way down without the color shifts you get with other lights.