Alien Bees, Lighting Review

If your in the market for a new portable strobe kit and you don't want to break the bank, especially during these times with the financial burden. Well this might just be the answer you have been looking for. Say hello to Alien Bees. Alien bees are the creation from photographer Paul C. Buff. His aim was to create a cheaper alternate source of lighting, with out the expense of say a profoto kit or an elinchrome kit. Now, i have never owned any Alien Bees, however, i got the chance to use some last Aus snow season for a week so heres my take on it.


First Impressions: Big. Big battery pack, big lights. Big kits for that matter. The space they take up in you bag is crazy. Its lucky they come with their own travel case. Very easy to use. the sliders on the back are all marked out with power settings and what not. The auto dumb is also an added bonus, especially when changing your power setting from full power(over powering daylight situations)to 1/4 power when you need to shoot a portrait. I had read quite a bit on them prior to using them so i knew that the durations get longer as you power them down, contrary to any normal strobe out on the market. I used the 800’s and they are usable depending on the situation for action, but great for portraits.


Anyways, here we go.


Build Quality:
These are straight up cheap. Built fairly cheap and are not that tough, especially in a snow environment. That being said, their repair people are pretty good from reviews and things that I've read and are willing to work with you and help you out if things are urgent. I guess thats a bonus considering they only sell in USA, bought direct from them and no one else

Cables/Accessories:
The cables are targeted to be easily replaceable and cheap. Power cable are a standard computer power supply cable. If you need to replace it, chances are you can find one in any town you are in. Same goes with the sync cable, it’s a standard 1/4″ miniphone (headphone) mono cable. Can find it at any jaycar or dick smiths or electronics store. Reflectors are cheap, but they do their job. Using a soft box is easy, just use the Alien Bee speed rings on any soft box. Chimera, Photoflex and Impact. The attachment system for the reflectors, soft boxes and umbrella's are simple and easy to use.

Flash Durations:
Always look for flash durations using the t.1 method. The t.5 method which only measures the duration at ONLY 50% discharge. What does this mean? It means that there is still 50% of the light to still come out of your strobe head. This also means that you need to basically multiply the duration times 1.8x in order to see what the usable duration is beceause, the head is still putting another 50% of it’s light. The method that is useful to us and that matters is the t.1, that measures 90% of the output.

Taken from the Alien Bees website:
http://www.alienbees.com/flash.html

Model Full Power 1/32 power (minimum)
B1600: 1/600 1/300
B800: 1/1100 1/550
B400: 1/2000 1/1000


Portable Power Pack:
This is an interesting thing. It’s one of the only systems where you could actually build your own power pack. You can plug any monolight that plugs into a regular wall socket. however these are the only ones on the market that are small enough to even consider putting in a backpack and using them at the locations we all tend to go to. The Vagabond and Vagabond II systems are simply put a sealed lead-acid 12v battery and an true sine wave inverter in a modified esky. The difference between the 2 models is the Vagabond II provides a faster recycle time and more pops of the strobe. They are simple and they work and another nice thing about them, is it’s a portable power system for anything you own that plugs into a wall sockets when your power goes out! The Vagabond weighs approximately 10kgs. The Vagabond II is a bit lighter at 8.5kgs. One nice thing about the simple power pack is you can save a few bucks and build your own. The important thing for someone building this type of system is that a true sine wave inverter is used.

Usability in the outdoors:
There is an internal fan in the Alien Bee strobe units. Because of this there are vents on the housing of the Alien Bee heads. Water, snow, etc can get into these. If you shoot in bad weather, this could be an issue. try to keep them somewhat sheltered from the elements by covering them with plastic, leaving the bottom open to allow for ventilation. If you shoot in dry conditions all the time, this should not be an issue.

Light Quality:
The light quality of these are good but not great. It’s not a Profoto or an Elinchrom, the light isn’t as great as those systems, but it’s still good.

Bottom Line:
They are the best bang for your buck.

To learn more on these lights and all other Alien Bee products, head to

http://www.alienbees.com


ben.