Should i buy an Alien Bee for my Home Studio. Please Help!!!

[andre_elliott]

<p>

<p >I own a Nikon D80 and 2 sb600 flashes. i'm setting up a studio in my living and plan to be taking alot of full body photos using a 9' background. I i'm undecided between the ab 400 and the ab800. i plan on using the speedlights for as key and fill and the alien bee for the background. which alien bee should I get. the studios not that big. it's just my living. I was wondering if i should use the ab as the main light and the speedlights for the background? what would you do in the position?</p>

<p >Also, could i just get started with the 2 speedlights and a reflector?</p>

</p>

[derrickdehaan]

<p>Personally, I love my alienbees. I own 3 800's and one 400. I would however advise to get more alienbees or more Nikkon flashes. I would not mix the two. This would help to avoid differences in color temperature which is practically impossible to fix in post processing.<br>

Oh, and I would get 800's<br>

Derrick</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>For full length shots, you're better off with the AB800 as your main light, and the speedlights for the background - unless you really need to blow out the background. But it really doesn't matter. You're going to find yourself needing a fair amount of light for full length shots - and the AB800 is going to provide substantially more than the speedlights. What you're really going to find is that you're going to mix, re-arrange, and use them in 100 different ways to suit your subject, the choice of background, and the look you're after.<br /><br />The real issue, of course, is making sure you understand how you're going to trigger those strobes all together. The SB-600 doesn't have a way to be a simple optical slave, and doesn't have a PC connector. You're going to need a hot shoe adapter for each of them, either of the optical variety, or with a PC connector so that you can use external radio triggers. Or, you can look at radio triggers that have a hot shoe, like the upcoming new PWs.</p>

[nathan_stiles]

<p>Putting a small, low powered speedlight as your key and fill, and a strobe that can actually handle a softbox as the BG light makes no sense to me :(</p>

<p>But, if you are set this way, you might at well get the smaller AB.</p>

[prettygeeky]

<p>I'd use the AlienBee as the main light and use the speelight as back/fill/rim lights.</p>

<p>On how to trigger them? Without investing on any other wireless triggers, I guess you could fire off the speedlights with Nikon CLS and set the AlienBee to optical slave. It's worth trying since it wont cost you anything extra.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Ty: that won't work, because the pre-exposure CLS flashses would cause the AB to go off early.</p>

[mike_jenkins3]

<p>QUESTION: So the Alien Bee(s) can be set to go off optically thus not needing to buy the wireless adapters?</p>