Can I trust salespeople re AB's versus other light kits?

no, its a Vosonic X's Drive II + VP2160...in 60gb. so far its worked fine for me, but honestly i havent had to use it a whole lot yet. just bc im usually not too far away from my desktop and im pretty content with my cameras largest jpeg most of the time. ill be honest that digital wallets do make me a little nervous, but there have been a couple of occasions that a laptop wouldnt have been practical at all and i dont have one anyway.

in case your wondering how i chose that model, i really liked the epson version with a display and some of the other fancier ones, but they get awefully pricey, so id just rather spend a little more and hope for a fantastic deal on a very basic laptop, which would give me a harddrive, burner and nice big screen. that really wasnt in my budget at the time, so i wanted a super simple, no frills to go wrong very basic unit and the x's II met that critera, and has been fine so far.

i really love my stormcases, but what sold me was the latch design. i just got fed up with the pelican case i had to deal with at school once and decided that no matter how badass the pelican cases were (and they are) IF i could find an alternative i would try it and i did and love it. the one thing i wonder about in either of the cases, is that the foam seems so hard. i just wonder if it should me more squishy. it makes me think about highschool football and our helmets and how hard the inside of them was. i think i ended up without any major head trama, so i guess those designers knew what they were doing ;-)

i think the stormcases meet all your needs, but i cant remeber if they were supposed to be able to float with a certain amount of weight inside. im pretty sure the pelicans were. dont quote me on this, but im GUESSING that because of the auto valve on the stormcases, you might not be able to use them as a floatation device in the event of an unplanned water landing. other than that i think they are more or less water-tight.

...and jennifer...im sorry too.

steven

Jennifer,

<p>An year ago, I was in the same situation as you. After two months of searching through forums I decided to order AB 800 and AB 400. I spent about 1300$ on two monolights, two umbrellas (one shoot-through), two softboxes, stands, flashmeter.

<p>I used my AB's in my studio and in locations for weddings, always using the modeling light on.

<br>

<p><b>What pleased me about AB's:</b>

<ul><li>fast recycling (I hadn't to wait for next shot, at full power AB800 recycle in less than a second);

<li>stepless adjustement (I can adjust the output of the light with a precision of 0.1 stop);

<li>consistency of output (if I fire ten times, the output doesn't varry more than 0.1 stop);

<li>they are light (carrying bags and the light weight of monolight makes me happy when I have to move my lights in a location);

<li>optical slave works very well, so no need for excesive wires;

<li>both modeling bulb and flash tube can be replaced by user;

<li>modeling light bulbs are common;</ul>

<br>

<b>What bothers me:</b>

<ul><li>only 150W for modeling light (sometimes, when I shoot in location I would like to have more power in modeling light, to see better how to place the monolight);</ul>

<br>

I never used Elinchrom, so I can't make a comparison.

Some people speak about inconsistent colour accuracy. I doubt this is a real problem. I suppose you will use softbox or umbrella and in such case more important is the colour of the fabric. I shoot digital and never felt that I have a problem with consistentcy of the colours.

<br><p>

If Alien Bees is considered cheap, this is not a problem for me. I used three years a Vivitar 283. Finally, I found that is a cheap flash. So what? If it does very well its job I don't care that are a lot of more expensive and sophisticated flashes out there.

<br>

<p>AB service seems to be very responsive. I hadn't any problems with my units, so I can't speak how fast they solve a problem, but I know they respond very quick at emails. When I bought my monolights I asked them to modify both units for 220Volts (I live in Romania) and they did, but they forgot to deliver me spare bulbs for modeling light at 220V 150W, they putted on my package spare bulbs at 110V. When I receive my package, I hasted to replace the modeling bulb with spare 150W. Of course, first bulb burnt after 20 minutes. Then I saw the mismatch of voltage. I emailed them to say that spare bulbs were for 110V not 220V. They offered to send me the right bulbs right away. I decline because I found spare bulbs in my country for only 2$ at supermarket and I thought is a nonsense to let them spend 50$ on shipping. Though, I was impressed because Alien Bees people show that they care about me.

Claudiu,

thanks for your response! I appreciate it. I'm glad to hear that the Alien Bees are working well for you. I think I've decided to go with AB's. Here's one reason why (in addition to all the good things I've heard on this site & this thread): I found a document I liked on the Paul C. Buff White Lightning site. I wrote to the email and asked if I could print it out and distribute it to my photography class. (When I teach classes, I either write all my own material or get permission to distribute copies of someone's web article.)

I didn't really expect to hear back, but the very next day a person from the company wrote to me. He told me that I was welcome to use the article in my class, AND he was willing to send me as many copies of it as I wanted, so that I would not need to spend my own money printing it out! Amazing!

I mean, this was not necessarily the best article ever written in the world, but it was informative and useful to people who might be interested in lighting basics. I was thrilled to get such good customer service, especially since I not even technically a customer! (yet)

Anyway, it gave me a very good feeling about the responsiveness of Alien Bee & White Lightning. And since I'm not going to subject my equipment to really heavy use, I think they'll BEE (haha) just fine for me.

thanks again for your response!

Jennifer

This sort of argument is pointless. At first, you buy the same lights your immediate friends

have, regardless of the make (assuming you don't have unreasonably stupid friends). Then

you can trade lights back and forth interchangeably when one of you needs more light

than you own for an upcoming assignment.

Later, when you have all the light you normally need, but you occasionally borrow whole

assemblies instead of just an extra head or power supply, different brands work fine

together. Robin Reid, my wife, bought the then-new White Lightning brand, I bought a

long-established commercial photographers' favorite brand. Both still work reliably after

decades and she uses her lights and mine together when she does a group portrait of

twenty of our nation's higher court judges in black robes in a dark wood-paneled room.