Alien bees b800 vs 580ex ii for indoor portraits

[Noxire]

I'd rather buy like five Yn560's for the price of one 580ex II. (or 2-3 and some light-modifiers)

More bang for the buck imo.

 

[Village Idiot]

Forget the hotshoe flash, get a strobe. Doing studio work the modeling lamp will prove invaluable to you. Besides that, attaching a 22" beauty dish to the hot shoe flash may pose problems

Until you need to shoot away from a power source and more than a mile from your vehicle. Then you need batteries which are generally not light and the equipment gets heavy.

And Kacey Enterprises makes a bracket so you can attach multiple speedlights to a 22" beauty dish, so I don't see how that would pose much of a problem.

There's issues with either setup unless you look at something like an Elinchrom Quadra, but then you're paying over $2,000 for a shared 400w/s between two lights. Best thing to do is have a speedlight setup and a more powerful setup, but that's out of the OP's budget.

Since they're saying they're shooting inside, a cheap monolight or a monolight kit would do, but if they discover that they want to venture outdoors, then what?

I've never shot outdoors with a hotshoe flash and I don't think my work suffers one bit from not having it. The poster said he's shooting indoor studio so I'm trying to figure out where this outdoor situation is coming from?

When I read the op's post it says

for indoor portraits of babies and people

Or did I miss something?

And FYI, I have a 320watt strobe that is battery operated and light weight. You CAN get those things from Kacey but why spend extra money? I STRONGLY disagree with the recommendation of getting a "cheap" monolight. As soon as the op is serious about shooting indoors, the cheap monolight will be more of a problem and they will end up getting a quality kit. I learned the hard way when I went from Britek to Alienbees. Both served a purpose but neither are good for serious shooting. Can they be used? Yes for sure, my first 5 published images were shot with Britek 120watt strobes, but it didn't make my job any easier!

Er....Alien Bees are cheap.

 

[KmH]

The 580EX II and a softbox will limit the range of shots you can do.

A 15" or 24" softbox, as recommended, is about as big as a 580EX II can illuminate. I mentioned the 580EX was going to be a bit low on power, and a soft box will eat up even more of what power the 580EX II has to offer.

A 24" softbox is the size used to do head, or head and shoulder shots. It's not big enough to do much more. At any rate you'll also need a light stand, and a softbox designed work with a hot shoe flash.

Westcott 2331 28-Inch Apollo Flash Kit

If all you need is a good softbox:
Westcott Apollo 28" Light Modifier with Recessed Front

If the cost of a good small softbox is an issue, you can always use a convertable umbrella in shoot-through mode instead, and since umbrellas cost so much less than softboxes, you can get bigger umbrellas;
Westcott 2011 43in. Optical White Satin Collapsible with Removable Black Cover

Photoflex 60" Convertible Umbrella

 

[Overread]

*Moving to equipment subsection*