Hi everyone! I am brand new to photography and am finally looking into kicking it up a notch from natural lighting & getting some artificial lights. As of now, I think I will be purchasing an Alien Bee strobe with a beauty dish, as well as a soft box, which I will either use with a speedlight or another Alien Bee strobe. I use an entry level DSLR (Canon t5i), with a 50mm lens. So, I am wondering, how exactly are strobes "fired" (particularly Alien Bee strobes). I understand they somehow have to sync to the camera, but do I also need to purchase some sort of trigger or transmitter? What exactly do I need to automatically fire my flashes? Thank you for the help, as always.
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Hello Tia
in order to fire the flash, you will need a trigger to remotely activate the flash...
i don't know about the Alien Bee, but some flashes come with the trigger when u buy them, some not (or maybe all of them come with the trigger, idk)
but generally speaking, any strobe or external flash (if not mounted on the cameras hotshoe) needs a trigger.
there are lots of cheap and expensive triggers or radio transmitters in the market, but i DON'T think you need to go for the expensive one, because you might only use one light at a time or something tricky.
yet, i recommend you to wait for others to answer or go to a camera store and ask for some in depth information about that...
good luck
Hey Tia!
When shooting with flash, keep in mind that you shutter speed has to be kept under a certain limit. For the T5i, if I'm not mistaken, it should be 1/200s. So anything faster (1/250s, 1/800s, etc.) won't work, and you'll get banding in your frame.
To sync your flash with your camera, or to trigger the flash when you release the shutter you have a few solutions.
#1/ Remote triggers – They work using radio transmission. If your strobes don't have a receiver, you'll need receivers as well. It's the most practical, but the most expensive solution as well. There are different brands of triggers. The easiest solution is usually to get the triggers from your flash manufacturer. Paul C. Buff has the CyberSync for example. Note that some transmitters will even let you adjust your flash power remotely.
#2/ PC Sync cable – Cheap and reliable solution. You'll only need a cable that plugs into your camera (PC port) and to the flash (usually 2.5 or 3.5mm mini jack). The cable can be found on B&H or from your manufacturer for less than 10$ (https://www.paulcbuff.com/absc.php). If you have multiple flash units, be sure to activate the optical trigger on the ones that are not connected with the cable. This way, when they "see" the flash popping, they'll trigger as well.
#3/ Optical trigger – This works most of the time but not always… enable the optical receiver of your flash units, enable the pop-up flash of your camera (set to minimum power). When you snap a picture, your popup flash will fire, and the strobes will fire with it because of the optical trigger. However, this doesn't work well in bright conditions (forget about outdoors). Also, the popup flash can be visible in the final picture, which might not be desirable.
Hope this helps :)