Lighting help

Got Grins?

Hi!

I have a Nikon d90, sb900 and an alienbee 400. What do I need in order to have them run all together? I have no other accessories and am just lost at what I need. Right now I use the alien bee with a wire attached to the camera.

Thanks so much!

perroneford

Got Grins? wrote: »

Hi!

I have a Nikon d90, sb900 and an alienbee 400. What do I need in order to have them run all together? I have no other accessories and am just lost at what I need. Right now I use the alien bee with a wire attached to the camera.

Thanks so much!

Disconnect the wire to the Bee. Done.

When the SB900 fires, it will trigger the Bee, as long as nothing is plugged into the port on the Bee.

Got Grins?

I would like to use the SB900 off camera though?! Sorry, I'm new to studio lighting....

ziggy53

perroneford wrote: »

Disconnect the wire to the Bee. Done.

When the SB900 fires, it will trigger the Bee, as long as nothing is plugged into the port on the Bee.

I presume you mean to use the optical slave capability of the Alien Bee (AB) studio strobe? That will only work properly if the SB-900 is attached to the camera body on the hotshoe or via an off-camera cord or simple flash cord "and" if the SB-900 is set to manual mode.

If the SB-900 is set to iTTL, the pre-flash will typically trigger the Alien Bee optical slave before the contributing flash from the SB-900, resulting in severe underexposure of the image.

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If the intent is to have both the SB-900 and Alien Bee fire as contributing flashes, I often use a simple radio master/slave set, with separate slave receivers for both flashes. Both flashes are set to full manual control and the camera is set to either manual control or AV mode, whichever fits the situation. The flashes may be placed anywhere within radio range.

You may also use the built-in flash of the D90 to optically trigger the external flashes if the D90 internal flash can be set to manual control (I don't remember if the D90 has that capability or not), or if you use an appropriate "digital" optical slave on each external flash to ignore the pre-flash pulse from the SB-900.

ziggy53

I moved this to Accessories. Carry on.

time2smile

The D90 can do a manual preflash, with the SB900 set to off camera CLS, that way you dont need to worry about preflash triggering the bee, and the camera will control the SB900 settings.

angevin1

ziggy53 wrote: »

You may also use the built-in flash of the D90 to optically trigger the external flashes if the D90 internal flash can be set to manual control (I don't remember if the D90 has that capability or not), or if you use an appropriate "digital" optical slave on each external flash to ignore the pre-flash pulse from the SB-900.


Yes, it does. Just use the D-90's Built in flash on Manual and dial in how much you'd like it to contribute, have it control the SB900 in M and you should be set, right?

ziggy53

time2smile wrote: »

The D90 can do a manual preflash, with the SB900 set to off camera CLS, that way you dont need to worry about preflash triggering the bee, and the camera will control the SB900 settings.

angevin1 wrote: »

Yes, it does. Just use the D-90's Built in flash on Manual and dial in how much you'd like it to contribute, have it control the SB900 in M and you should be set, right?

Cool.

Thanks guys.

Zerodog

angevin1 wrote: »

Yes, it does. Just use the D-90's Built in flash on Manual and dial in how much you'd like it to contribute, have it control the SB900 in M and you should be set, right?

The problem is the preflash from either the pop up or the sb900. It will trigger your optical trigger on the AB before the picture is taken. It will look like the flash goes off, because it does, but it is before you take a picture. I believe if everything is set to manual you might be able to get synced up with an optical trigger. As long as you keep your shutter speed down below 1/250.

I ran into something similar doing a shoot last week with pocket wizards triggering an optical triggered flash. Preflashes kick your ass even going this route.

Mike J

So here's what I think the summary is...
Goal: use SB900 off camera along with the AB
Option 1- get a set of radio triggers (lots of ebay options plus others out there (Pocket Wizard). You would need a transmitter and at least one receiver (or two). The transmitter goes in the hot shoe of the camera. SB900- You could put the SB900 in the hot-shoe of the receiver or run a short sync cable from the receiver to the SB900. AB - The receiver for the AB would also be connected to the AB with a short cord. The SB900 would need to operate in manual mode. You could also do this with one receiver and put it on the SB900 and have the AB trigger optically. That way you don't have to mess with the pop-up flash at all. Or put the receiver on the AB and put the SB900 in SU-4 mode.

Option 2 - this is the avoid buying some radio triggers option... Put the SB900 in SU-4 mode so it triggers via the optical slave. Again you would need to set the SB900 to manual and set the power on the flash. The AB has a built-in optical slave - just don't plug anything into the sync port. You would use the pop-up flash on the camera to trigger both the SB900 and AB. Again, the pop-up flash would need to be set manual to avoid the AB triggering off preflashes. You could dial the power of the pop-up flash if you didn't want to to really contribute to the exposure.

I use both of these methods with my AB's and SB800 - particular the receiver on the SB800 and trigger the AB optically. With either of these, you are setting the power manually on the strobes.