AlienBees lighting...

anyone heard of and/or used AlienBees studio lights? they seem pretty

reasonably priced & I'm thinking of getting into some basic studio stuff...

<p>

thoughts?   <a href="http://www.alienbees.com" target="_blank">

(www.alienbees.com)</a>

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thanks!

I think I'd put the words "alien bees" in the search window at the top and see what comes up<g>.

The alien bees are pretty good lights, they are way too plasticy for my taste. I do 99% of my work in clients homes, so I am always banging my lights around in the back of my jeep. I ended up skipping the alien bees and spending a tad more on a set of White Lightning lights (also from Paul Buff).

<a href="http://bmacphoto.com">Brian - bmacphoto.com</a>

I've got an old pair of White Lightning Ultra 1800's, but I ordered an Alien Bee's B800 the other day to use as a background, kicker, hairlight, etc. When I get it, I'll let you know what I think! Jeremy

I was going to tell you to put "Alien Bees" in the search window also until I tried it myself. As I suspected, much has been said about them, little has been archived.<p>

Alien Bees are your basic "starter" monolights made by a division of Paul C. Buff. Not a bad value for the price and they will take modifiers from another manufacturer (whose name escapes me at the moment). In short, you could do alot worse for the money.

"they will take modifiers from another manufacturer (whose name escapes me at the moment)"

 

In another, related discussion Ellis Vener said he believed they work with Balcar and Comet.

Alien Bees, like white lightnings, Use a Balcar compatible reflector, light

modifier (softboxes, etc.) mount. <A HREF = http://www.balcar.com> Balcar</

A>. Balcar makes the best light modifying tools in the industry, especially for

portrait and fashion work.

I received my B800 today along with Large (32"x40") softbox and speedring. To my suprise the speedring is actually a Chimera speedring for the White Lightning Ultra series (which is compatible w/ Balcar and the Alien Bees) so if I ever decide to step-up to Chimera boxes I don't need to buy the speedring! The softbox is a Light Gear Softbox (another Paul Buff company) and while well-made is obviously not constructed to be torn down over and over (I just need it for my in-house studio and therefore won't be taking it anywhere). The construction is comparable to the Photoflex line of softboxes. The actual monolight is very small--about half the size and weight of my WL Ultra 1800's-- and in the softbox at a distance of 50" (the diagonal of the softbox) gives me a consistent f/16.4 @100iso on my Minolta IVF lightmeter. The built-in fan is very quiet, just a simple whirr that is easily ignored. I've just used it to take some back-lit photos of glassware and it never failed to fire on any of the 15 shots with my late-70's Mamiya M645. I'll use it to take some portraits in a week or so and if anything of note comes up, I'll re-post here. All-in-all I heartily recommend them for the beginning or intermediate studio photographer.

 

Jeremy