As many of you know, I already had an Alien Bee B800 (http://www.alienbees.com/) that I purchased last year. I've been shooting all my portraits using this light, back by the camera, with an umbrella, which spreads the light across the entire scene. While it works, it certainly couldn't be called "correct". It's the same setup that Wal-Mart, Sears, and the like use. While this isn't bad necessarily, there's a certain "look" associated with them, which as individuals we should try to stay away from. It limits your creativity and your personal style has a tougher time coming through.
Last weekend I was approached by a person at my church to do senior portraits for his daughter. Last year I shot his older daughter, but that was in October, so we did an outdoor portrait. Fog doesn't quite suit a senior portrait, so we both decided to do it indoors, at his house.
With this in mind, I wanted to do it right. Yes, one strobe and umbrella would work, but as I said before, that's limiting. So I decided to set up a three-strobe portable studio, but I didn't have the equipment! This would take a bit of research, since a full studio setup would obviously cost more than they are paying for their portrait.
A friend of mine recommended an inexpensive strobe called the Achiever. It only costs $29.99 at Filco, and doesn't have much power. It also isn't a TTL strobe by any means, but it has one great advantage: it's a slave. That means it's triggered by the firing of another strobe. It also means you don't need wires.
My original plan was to use the 420EX strobe that I use with my 10D, but off-camera using the off-camera E-TTL cable. After hooking it up, I realized this isn't really practical, since the cable is only 2 feet long! I did have another cable, the one for the Bee, but the plug was wrong.
A trip to Radio Shack solved that problem in the form of a mono 1/8" to 3/32" convertor, which is intended for audio use, but works great in this situation. I have another strobe that I had purchased for my Canon AE-1 about 3 years ago. Again, it's a cheap strobe, I think I paid $12 for it at Wal-Mart (Vivitar brand), but the key is it also has the sync jack.
My 420ex came with a little stand so you can set the strobe on a table if you want. Using this stand, I mounted the Vivitar to the upper-right corner of the backdrop stand, using a heavy duty clamp that came from a halogen worklight. Oddly enough, the hand bolt that held the light in place also fit tripod threads, so that worked out wonderfully. This would be my hair light, and it's the strobe that gets triggered via PC Sync by the camera itself. I also placed an Lumiquest Omnibounce over the strobe, to diffuse the light and drop it down a few stops.
Next, I picked up what was labeled as a "digital tripod" from Wal-Mart for $15. This is an EXTREMELY light and fragile tripod; I wouldn't want to mount a camera to it. It folds up tiny and can be easily put into the camera bag for travel, and stands almost as high as my normal camera tripod. Using my remote sync cable that was too short, I mounted the Achiever strobe to the Wal-Mart tripod. This would be my fill light, which was placed 45 degrees to camera right, mounted with a small (3-foot) photographic umbrella.
Finally, the Alien Bee is the main light, 45 degrees to camera left. It also has its own 4-foot umbrella.
I performed my white balance shooting through of all things a Pringles lid. For focus, I set the Achiever strobe that's on the cheap tripod in the same spot my nose would be and focused on that. I shot using the 10-second timer in the 10D.
Here is the result:
Greg
