ALIENBEES?

I need to step my game up and buy some more powerful lighting for some outdoor sports shooting. I was

wondering if anyone had any words of wisdom on any of the Alienbees setups. I am working with Vivitar

285's now with pocketwizards for my external flashes. They just do not produce enough lighting re: fill

light. They work great for capturing the action shot but I am in need of lighting the surrounding areas.

Do the Alienbees work well with pocketwizards? Also, I am pretty set on B800, what kind of power pack

would be reasonable to run it for shoots upwards of 5 hours. I need as little recycling time as possible to

maybe get sequences. Thanks!

AlienBees don't have an extremely fast recycle time. If you fire them quickly hour after hour, you'll let the magic smoke escape.

"If you fire them quickly hour after hour, you'll let the magic smoke escape."

 

Have you done that Brooks or is that just an opinion from someone who hasn't used them? How does the Speedotron Blackline Force 5 monolight compare in recycle times to the comparable Alien Bees unit, the more powerful Alien Bees B1600 which does a full power recyle time in just under 2 seconds?

 

 

 

 

 

"Do the Alienbees work well with Pocketwizards?"

 

Yes.

 

 

"what kind of power pack would be reasonable to run it for shoots upwards of 5 hours."

 

Are you asking about batteries?

"If you fire them quickly hour after hour, you'll let the magic smoke escape."

 

"...Have you done that Brooks or is that just an opinion from someone who hasn't used them?..."

 

Ellis, you know that I don't use Alien Bees in my studio. I do have a friend who has one.

 

"....How does the Speedotron Blackline Force 5 monolight compare in recycle times to the comparable Alien Bees unit, the more powerful Alien Bees B1600 which does a full power recyle time in just under 2 seconds?..."

 

I don't use Speedotron monolights either, though the product specs for the Force 5, which has a true 500ws AND a 250 watt modeling lamp, state a recycle at 4-5 frames PER SECOND, at "lower power settings".

 

The Speedotron Force 10, 1000ws monolite has the same 4-5 frames per second spec at "lower power setings" and has twice the power of the Force 5.

 

The Force 10 might be more suitable for the OP's situation because even at a lower power there's still some usable light. 1000ws dialed down 4 stops to a lower power setting of 125ws and capable of 4-5 frames per second would be hard to beat with most any Bee, Alien or not. And the original question was about an AB800 which has even less power, only 300 ws or so.

 

I have done all day jobs with Speedotron Black line Packs, 4800ws and 2400ws, where I needed 16-24 full-power pops for each exposure on 8x10 film. 5 sheets of film per shot. That's pretty intense. Of course that was many years ago.

 

Today I shoot digitally and never need that capability because I'm not shooting lrge format and don't need those tight f-stops, but I am using the same 20 years old Black-line power packs and heads. They don't seem the worse for wear.

 

The OP is looking at a pretty intense, sequential use of a flash for 5 hours or so. I think he should be looking at something a bit more robust.

"AlienBees don't have an extremely fast recycle time."

 

Technically true. I find my AB1600 to recycle from a full power pop (which is many, many times more powerful than a vivitar 285!) in about 1.5 seconds plugged in.

 

However, if you dial your B800 down to 1/4 power or something reasonable, I bet you could easily get two frames a second, which is a heck of a lot better than a vivitar 285 at full power (I'm guessing full power vivitar = 1/4 power B800, but not sure), plus you would eventually fry the vivitar at full power and I really doubt you can hurt a bee this way.

 

"If you fire them quickly hour after hour, you'll let the magic smoke escape."

 

I highly doubt this. I have used my bees at wedding receptions where they were popping every 5-7 seconds for 20 minutes. They were hot, but not smoking at all.

 

I have used AB1600's for up to six hours at a time, shooting around 3500 frames at 1/4 to 1/2 power - once every five seconds or so. Again, they were very warm, but not at all smoking.

 

I think it is MUCH more likely that you will draw too much power and cause a circuit breaker to go!

 

Alien Bees can take batteries, but they are expensive and obviously will limit you to a certain # of shots. Investing in some long extension cords - IF it is safe and people aren't goign to walk all over them - is a better idea. You can buy a battery pack or build one, if you insist on using a battery or don't have an outlet source.

You can buy a battery pack for Alien Bess for $299. That seems inexpensive to me.

I've shot the heck out of my ABs all day long without a wisp of smoke. Never had a problem with recycle time either - but then again, I never tried making a movie out of still photographs.

I use alienbees. I have a B400 and a B800. My B800 will recycle in about a half second at full power. My

camera does 3fps. If I just hold down the shutter, it will catch about every second shot. If Brooke wants to

get into lowest power setting, then I think alienbees will give the speedotrons a run for their money. I

can't shoot fast enough to tell, though.

 

Never had smoke. Done school portraits. That's about 300 kids, two shots per kid, between 9am and

11.05 (lunch time), all in a row. They were warm, but certainly no smoke. If your alienbee is smoking,

you've probably broken it, and you should call AB tech support so they can ship you a loaner while they

fix it for you. (Lets see whoever else do that).

Though, I think AB's recycle fast enough, for sports photography I'd not recommend monolights. The OP didn't state what kind of sports (covering a football game is different than a wrestling match), nor his budget. For most events, it'd be hard to beat the Speedotron 1205cx or 2405cx w/ 202vf heads.

 

They are much more durable, made for location shooting, cooler running than monolights, fast recycle rate, and packed w/ power. For sports, I'd run these on AC, to keep the fast recycle rate if at all possible.

Alex,

I just bought a set of the 800s. As a portable strobe user, I will tell you that I have run some informal measurements and they appear to give about 2x the light as the 285HV (an extra stop). Again, that was a quick reading behind a diffusion panel. At full power, they take 2 seconds to recycle. You may want to consider the B1600 which would give you an extra stop and probably quicker recycle times than the B800 since you would probably not need to shoot at such a high percentage of power. Then again, you could trade up to the White Lightnings with the 1 second recycle time for just a bit more. Fast recycle times aren't as important to me so my B800s are fine.

I'm too lazy to look it up, but isn't the 1 second recycle time only when you cut them to 1/4 power by turning off the other 3 capacitors? I'm pretty sure that's at 1/4 power, but I've been wrong before.