After my disaster with my Inovatronix ExplorerXT I decided to go with the AlienBees Vagabond II. All I can say is that it performed FLAWLESSLY! I have nothing bad to say about it. The recycle times were impressive (less than 1 second with 3 AlienBees B800 units at about 1/8 power). It’s nice to be back in action in the mobile power department.
Rena did great and she is a long-time friend. We sneaked into and shot in the old sub-level of Old Sacramento. It was a fun shoot and I really enjoyed working with her!
Had another outdoor shoot with Veronika. Typical AlienBees 2x B800 setup. This location was more remote and there was no power available. I used my Innovatronix ExplorerXT and it worked great for about 5 minutes then it went DEAD. I finally realized that after owning the unit for about a year, the unit was deffective and it has never charged correctly. I always thought it was wierd that the charging LED never stayed lit for more than about 30 seconds but I thought it was still charging because it had always worked fine. After this shoot, I now finally understand that I have just slowly been depleating the charge of the batter over a year long period and that it has never really been charged since I have owned it. I now have a completely useless, dead external power pack that is out of warranty and no longer a winner in my opinion. Even better, I can’t get a hold of Innovatronix for support or anything. I’ve emailed and called with no luck. I guess you get what you pay for.
Congratulations to Mr. & Mrs. Ellenberger. They were married in Berkeley, CA on June 26th 2009. The ceremony was held in an amazing redwood forest in the Berkeley botanical gardens.
I saw a program on The Discovery Channel recently about photographing water droplets using high speed video cameras. I thought I’d give it a shot using a traditional digital SLR. This setup is incredibly basic and went something like this:
Setup:
Baking pan for water
C-Stand with grip arm to hold zip-lock bag filled with water over baking pan
Tripod
Camera (In this case, a Nikon D3 with a Micro Nikkor 60mm AF lens)
PW’d AlienBees B800 with 10 degree honeycomb grid
Sample book of Roscolux gels. (The free book of small gells that you can get from lighting stores, has about 500 free gels in them)
Reflective material behind the baking pan to reflect light down onto the water. I used anything from a water color painting made by a friend of mine to a white piece of poster board.
I shot in manual, about 1/250th sec @ f 16 with the strobe at full power pointing at the background material. I had to shoot A LOT of frame (about 300) to get these few keepers. Its a very inexact science. Mostly trial and error. In a perfect world, I would have liked to have shot at a faster shutter speed, but my D3 syncs at 1/250, so I was somewhat limited. A fix for this would have been to use a SB-800 or SB-900 with high speed sync enabled, but I just didn’t get around to it. Stopping down a little more would have also helped with some focus issues I was clearly experiencing.
After some serious consideration, I finally decided to invest in an AlienBees lighting setup. I had read a lot of great reviews about their stuff, but I also had read some s0-so or even negative reviews about them as well. After spending a day with the system, I really feel like I got my money’s worth. I plan to write a full review soon. Here is a super quick one though…
AlienBees B800 and B1600 flash units – Great! Satisfactory to very satisfactory build quality. Lexan body seems sturdy and not “plasticy”. The accessory mount, while different, seems like it will hold up well against the smorgasbord of light modifiers I picked up. Even a 5 foot octabox. Great features like modeling light tracking, senstitive optical slave, ability to use the modeling light as a ready light, telling you when your flash is recycled. I like that the swivel tightening lever can be adjusted by simply pulling it out and reorienting it to where you want. This will help guard against strain and fatigue on the moving parts.
The Paul C Buff Octabox and Extra Large foldable softbox assemble in seconds. (not counting putting the front on). Literally the easiest softboxes to put together. The AlienBees proprietary accessory / speedring mount is equally easy to manage. More on these soon I hope.
Now, to the point of my post. There was one troubling scenario I had ran across a couple times on the photo sites about the inconsistent light output of AlienBees units, especially at low power settings. This was a big area of concern for me so I decided to see for myself if there was any truth behind these stories. I used a Sekonic L358 meter and put them to the test. See the results for yourself. There is some slight variance in output, mainly right after lowering the output of the flash. I assume this happens as the capacitors fully discharge.
The B800 performed well in my opinion, and the B1600 performed even better. No, these are not Profoto or Dynalite quality flashes BUT for under $400 a piece, you really can’t go wrong with these lights. I hope this helps anyone who’s on the fence.
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