Portable Studio Lights

[delizo23]

im ready to buy an Alienbee B1600 and a Vagabond II

but....

i wanted to ask you guys first. can you plug in two Alienbee strobes into one Vagabond battery? if not, is that even possible? does that effect the performance of the flash power. whats a good, but decent priced battery or strobe setup that can do that? cuz i just dont want to be carrying around two huge batteries, two strobes, two stands. thats alot. someone school me in studio strobes, cuz im a newb when it comes to that.

 

[Big Mike]

Yes, you can absolutely plug in more than one light...you'll just need an adapter, extension cord, power bar etc. because it's only got one physical outlet. This will obviously affect the number of shots you get out of a battery...but I'm not sure if it will affect the recycle time. It probably does but I don't think it would be too much.

There are other battery packs available. Look up 'Ranger' and/or 'Explorer'

You could even make your own. (like I did) All you need is a battery and a Pure Sine Wave Inverter. I used a smaller battery so the 'kit' weighs about half what a Vagabond weighs. It's light enough that I can strap it to the bottom of a light stand and still carry it around (light, stand and battery) as one unit.

 

[inTempus]

I routinely run 3 lights of my Vagabond II. I have a single extension cord with a four plug head that I run from the battery to my lights. I shoot all day with it and I've yet to run it completely dry.

The actual number of flashes based upon the number of lights you have connected can be found on the PCB website.

 

[delizo23]

thanks for the quick replies guys, very helpful. im gonna pull the trigger on some ABs

mike: thanks for the tip. i saw your DIY battery before. pretty nice and clean.

 

[Derrel]

Here is a brief primer on setting up an economical studio. Using the monolights in this article, it would cost $389 for three, 150-watt-second monolights, three light stands, and three umbrellas.

I like the two-outlet Tronix Explorer 1200 portable battery/pure sine wave inverter. It has two 115-volt A outlets built right in on the pack--no need to carry a power strip just to plug in a second light--the people at Innovatronix went the extra $10 to put the second outlet in. Rob Galbraith DPI: Tronix Explorer 1200 delivers on its promise of bargain performance

And yes, using two flash units will cut the recycle time compared with using just a single light. The biggest drain on a sine wave inverter is actually running modeling lights--they take a huge amount of charge, compared with flash bursts.

The web is full of articles on monolight use. Lots of search material is available.