Toronto Portrait Photographer: Alien Bees B1600 with Beauty Dish

The shots in this post were taken at High Park in Toronto. I was commissioned for a portrait session about a month ago, and decided to follow the old adage: "Better bring it and not need it than need it and not have it" regarding equipment. Bringing a Kata bag with two strobes, a Vagabond II battery and several stands, along with a foldable octabox and beauty dish requires a certain level of fitness to carry around a park, one that I certainly didn't have. I'm so glad I dragged that stuff around through, because the results were quite pleasing. The following shots were done using a B1600 attached to a 22" beauty dish with a difusser sock over it. The strobe was triggered using Pocket Wizards, and the power was set at 1/8 power for most of them. In my next post I'll put some pictures up of the shots that were done using an SB-900 with a HONL speed grid, which are ideal for creating dramatic lighting.

Alien Bees vs. Nikon's SB-900: The Battle Continues

Well, is not really a battle, as each one has their place and time and at Stephanie's and Rene's big day I had to use both. The first and only time that I had to bring the ABs out was for the family and bridal party pictures. This particular situation required quite a bit of power because the couple wanted their images taken under a gazebo on a very bright day (can you say severely back lit?).

The following image was taken with a simple setup of one (1) AB1600 on a medium foldable ocatbox at camera right at 1/2 power triggered via PWs and one (1) AB800 on a 22" beauty dish at camera left at 1/2 power triggered via PWs.



The same setup was used for this larger group image:


By contrast, I just required one (1) SB-900 off camera on a Lumiquest Softbox III set to TTL -0.7 EV and one (1) SB-800 set to TTL 0.0EV positioned across the room (you can see it in the picture). All triggered via Nikon's CLS.

More Selfies with Lumiquest Softbox III and Alien Bees

The setup for these shots was just the same as the one for the previous post. The only difference being that the background SB-800 was substituted by a B1600 at 1/32 power with a green gel over the reflector. Both triggered by Pocket Wizards.