alien bee 400 and canon rebel xti

[verneille_tassin]

<p>i purchased an alien bee 400 to use in my in home studio where i take portraits of people. Unfortunatley I'm having trouble gettin my camera and alien bee to work together. any advice on what i need to set the alien bee or camera to? Also i do not have the hot shoe instead im using my camera's flash to trigger the alien bee. Thankx</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Set your camera's flash to MANUAL, so that it doesn't emit any pre-exposure metering flashses. Turn OFF any anti-red-eye settings on the camera (which also cause the flash to pulse before the exposure). Once you have your built-in flash emitting only a single flash, during the exposure, the optical slave on the B400 should work correctly.<br /><br />Set your camera to MANUAL exposure. Set the ISO to 200, the shutter speed to 1/125, and the lens aperture to around f/5.6. Set the B400's power to about half-way up the scale. Start like that, and adjust from there. Don't raise your ISO to increase brightness... turn up the strobe, or open up the lens farther. Shutter speed won't have any meaningful impact on the exposure - just keep it at or under 1/125th. <br /><br />Ultimately, you'll be happier if you get the hot-shoe adapter for the PC cord to the strobe... or better yet, some radio triggers. That way you don't have to pollute the scene with the pop-up flash's output.</p>

[Charles_Webster]

<p>You can't turn off E-TTL on Canon's built in flash ;-(</p>

<p>You need to get a hot-shoe adapter to allow you to use a standard PC connector to your AB strobe.</p>

<p>Don't spend more than ~$25, you don't need a "digital" or "voltage safe" version, the flash voltage of your AB strobe is safe for any camera.</p>

<p><Chas><br /></p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Woops, good catch there Charles. Thanks. I keep forgetting that users of that camera can't use their pop-up manually.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<p>If you want to get things going before you get a chance to buy a hotshoe adapter (make sure you get the right one too, you want one for the hotshoe on the camera not a hotshoe for the flash foot and Charles is right about getting an inexpensive one).</p>

<p>To make your setup work for the time being, press and hold the * button. That will make the pre-flash fire, wait for your Alien Bees to recycle, then take a shot. Obviously this is not a very good solution but I know I hate having new toys and not being able to play with them at least a little bit.</p>

<p>If you use the AB with any consitency you'll probably migrate to a radio trigger. No cords to trip over (and watch your AB or camera fall to the ground since they are hooked together). And you won't need line of site. If you ever use your flash in an environment where other people have cameras too their flashes would set off any flash you have with an optical trigger, not so with radio triggers. And I believe Alien Bees has triggers that can remotely control the power of the AB from the top of your camera.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>At the moment, Dan, the only way to remotely adjust the power on the AB strobes is to use their four-unit wired remote. They have a new system (the "Einstein") pending - but that's a whole different beastie.<br /><br />I agree that radio triggers - of almost any sort - are the right way to do this. The liberty to be unwired as you move about becomes very important after a while. </p>

[a._j._jacobs]

<p>Get a hotshoe adaptor, it's a cheaper solution if you can't afford wireless triggers. Flashzebra.com sells them for like $14 and Lon there is super nice, and very helpful! :) Make sure to get the right one, I ordered the wrong one first which is frustrating!<br>

PS I shoot with Xsi and an AB and this is what I did. :)</p>

[zack_mccrory]

<p>I just purchased a cheap wireless trigger/reciever off ebay for $22, and it works great. Using it with my AB400 and D90... all i did was put batteries in it and throw it on the camera... easy as can be.</p>