mixing strobe lights

[ihartphotography]

Is it a problem to mix strobe light manufactors? If i had a alien bee 400 and

an Aikiphoto 1000 would that be a huge problem?

[bill c.]

Sara-- In general, no, not at all. I do it all the time.

 

That being said, I find it more of a problem mixing older and newer strobes even from the same manufacturer, and also old and new lighting modifiers like umbrellas and especially softboxes. Those can develop a color shift from the ozone that is generated when the flash goes off, and it's worse in the softboxes because they are more enclosed.

 

But if the equipment is relatively new and the bulbs are color-corrected, I wouldn't worry about it unless you can see a major color difference from the lights in your finished product. If everything's working correctly, any difference should be very minor, usually nothing to worry about at all. Strobes have to work very similarly in an electrical fashion-- the gas in the flashtube has to be pure xenon, and the strobe is triggered by a very high-voltage (several thousand volts) ionizing pulse that allows the somewhat lower voltage (several hundred volts) main pulse to "flash" through the tube. That's the only way it can happen, and the only way to modify the color of the light is to coat the flashtubes (usually with a UV filter).

 

Other than that the only problem that might crop up could come from trying to judge the relative output of the strobes from different-powered modeling lights.

Happy shooting. -BC-

[martial_baribault1]

There is rarely a subtantial problem even with non-corrected flashtube,as mentioned earlier problems can crop up from accessories such as softboxes and/or shoot trough umbrellas that have somewhat yellowed

[ihartphotography]

thank you !

[savagesax]

If you are using white backgrounds a lot it could be a pain to constantly white balance every image.