Beginner off camera lighting kit

[Nekrose]

I was hoping that somebody could help me out.

I have been looking at DPS and it seems that Alienbees would be good to go with for lighting. I was thinking about getting the beginner kit with a B800 and a soft box. Which brings me to my question.

I have a Canon 7D which can trigger flashes wirelessly. I just learned how to do this. First off:

• Can the 7D fire non Canon speedlights wirelessly?
• Can the 7D fire the speedlight and the AlienBees at the same time?
• Can the 7D even fire the AlienBees wirelessly, or do I need to buy triggers?

I have no clue where to start with the whole off camera lighting deal. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Swisstony10]

I'm ready to be corrected, but if Alienbees (I wish these were more readily available here in the UK) work the same as most studio-type heads, then the 7D won't trigger them on its own. It'll trigger a speedlight, and it MAY trigger a speedlight-clone which is designed to work in exactly the same way as a speedlight.

If you have (or get) a non-Canon speedlight-clone, and the 7D can trigger it, then you'll be able to use the optical slaves on the Alienbees so that the flash from the speedlight-clone will fire them too. You'll find these to be pretty sensitive too - if you don't need to use the speedlight to provide light, you can set it on manual and dial the power back to minimum, mount it on the camera, point it behind you and shoot, and the tiny burst of flash should fire the ABs.

Failing that, you could get a trigger set (just one transmitter and one receiver), and use that to trigger the speedlight off-camera with the flash setting off the optical triggers in the ABs. For times when you don't want to use the speedlight, you can use the radio trigger to fire one of the ABs, with the other set to fire from the optical trigger..

Off-camera studio lighting is fun, and there are usually several different ways of doing any one thing.. You'll have a blast.

EDIT - I just looked up the Metz 58 AF1, a competitor to Canon's 580EXII, and it lists "ETTL Remote mode (master and slave operation), so I'm guessing that means it functions off-camera exactly the same as the official Canon one. It's almost certainly worth checking if you have or are thinking of getting a different non-Canon unit, to make sure it can be controlled remotely by the 7D.

[zona5101]

what swisstony said

[oldwolf]

Originally Posted by Nekrose

I have a Canon 7D which can trigger flashes wirelessly. I just learned how to do this. First off:

• Can the 7D fire non Canon speedlights wirelessly?
• Can the 7D fire the speedlight and the AlienBees at the same time?
• Can the 7D even fire the AlienBees wirelessly, or do I need to buy triggers?

Firing non Canon speedlights will be hit and miss depending on the brand. I'd have to guess that the answer is no in most but not all cases.

Yes, the 7D can fire the speedlight and Alienbees at the same time. We do it all the time, in studio and on location. With that being said though, we put the wireless receiver on the speedlight and when the Alienbee's optical slave sees that speelight go off then it fires itself.

The 7D can not fire just an Alienbee wirelessly unless you buy the transmitter and receiver.

You'll have a great time tinkering with off camera flash though.

EDIT:
Paul C. Buff (Alienbee people) makes a couple different types of transmitters and receivers. Make sure that you get the right one if you decide later that you'll want to go with their CyberCommander.

Paul C. Buff has a distributor in Europe it seems: http://paulcbuff.eu.com/cms/

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by Nekrose

• Can the 7D fire non Canon speedlights wirelessly?
• Can the 7D fire the speedlight and the AlienBees at the same time?
• Can the 7D even fire the AlienBees wirelessly, or do I need to buy triggers?

Strictly speaking, the answer to all these is "yes", but it's certainly not an elegant solution.

You can get a lot of different wireless triggers, and the most common base denominator is an optical flash trigger which "sees" another flash and triggers the one(s) it is connected to. It works most of the time, but it's not pretty.

The 7D is designed to use it's built-in flash as a master for the EXII (and EX, I believe) speedlights that are capable of slave (current the 420 and 580 series). This uses infrared controls to indicate power and distance (similar to Nikon's CLS). This was previously only attainable using the 580EXII on the camera as a master. It is also one of the few solutions to offer TTL control.

Your best bet is to use a wireless radio trigger of some kind that will allow your camera to trigger anything else it is connected to with the triggers. In most cases you lose TTL (which wont matter with Alienbees), though, so if you've gotten used to that, then watch out. That being said, using manual power on flashes is easier and more reliable.

[Nekrose]

Oh dear God.

This is all extremely confusing for me

But thank you all for the responses!

It looks like i will be getting some triggers with the Alienbees.

I am still extremely new to the whole off camera lighting concept, so I am still learning the terminology.

[zona5101]

Originally Posted by Nekrose

Oh dear God.

This is all extremely confusing for me

But thank you all for the responses!

It looks like i will be getting some triggers with the Alienbees.

I am still extremely new to the whole off camera lighting concept, so I am still learning the terminology.

besides cybersyncs cybercommander (the alienbee trigger) you can use Radio Popper Jrs Studio version. These will allow you to wirelessly control the light output of 3 banks of AB lights...