Using lights outdoors?

[rwilliams]

I have 2 AlienBees B800 Lights and a transmitter & receiver. I had them set up this past weekend for a shoot outdoors. For some reason, only the light with the receiver was working. I've played around with them at home and had no problems, so I'm pretty sure they were set up correctly. The shoot was under a pavilion and not directly in the light, but could it be possible that because it was brighter outside, that the second light wasn't picking up the flash from the first one? I'm not really sure how that works, but I just couldn't figure out why my second light wasn't flashing. When I pressed "test" it was working properly.

Any suggestions?

 

[tirediron]

In all probability, the second light simply could not 'see' the flash of the first. I've not used ABs, but my experience with other, similar consumer-grade lights using optical sync as been less than stellar in simlar circumstances. It was likely a combination of the positioning of the lights and the modifiers you were using more than the ambient light.

 

[Big Mike]

Like most monolights, yours have a built-in optical trigger. And like any optical trigger, is isn't as effective when in brighter ambient lighting conditions.

I don't recall where exactly the optical trigger sensor is on an Alien bee light, but if you know where it is, you could try having that side of the unit pointed toward the light that has the trigger.

Another option would be to use a 'peanut' slave, which is an external optical slave switch which you can put on the end of a short cord and plug into the light's sync port. This would allow you to easily aim the peanut slave toward the 'master' light. Still, ambient light will cause problems.

The best solution is to just get another radio receiver.

 

[rwilliams]

Thanks! I tried re-positioning but still couldn't get it to work. I'll probably invest in another receiver just to be safe.