Since a certain member here referred to an Annie Liebovitz video in support of her shooting a Canon d-slr some moths ago, I thought it might be a nice counterpoint to show a link to a video of Annie shooting a Nikon D3 and using a modern Profoto pack-and-head system flash,along with the excellent enclosed umbrella she uses so often these days, the Photek Softlighter, which has both umbrella-like setup and break down speed, as well as softbox-like light, but with rounded catchlights that do not obscure huge amounts of the eyeball with a massive,square or rectangular catchlight on close-in people photos.
Holly freaking run-on sentence Batman!
Those with college-level reading skills can probably use the commas as breath spots. Sorry to have challenged you Timmy.
Yes, Martin's work has a nice gimmick to it. The square-eyed look. He's made it his trademark gimmick. He has yet to achieve much success on a widespread basis; I notice Liebovitz got hired to shoot the Presidential family portraits at the White House not too long ago--where she shot them with a Canon camera, by the way. What, exactly, has Martin been doing these days besides the same old, formulaic, every-shot-just-like-the-next mugshots? I'm just sayin'...your link shows the same tired,shopwork gimmick, shot after shot after shot. A veritable one-trick pony is the example you're giving?
Sorry to spoil your homecoming Tim....but I see the religious fervor here in the Alien Bee defense attitude you've got. What I do not understand is why so many people will spend thousands and thousands of dollars on red-letter "L-glass" and then use a hobbyist brand of strobes and try and tell people who own higher-end systems how bad the higher-end systems are. It's like talking up the 18-55 and 55-200 kit zooms as being "durable" and "great",and then dismissing all those L-glass lenses that seem to creep into profile signature files. The original question was about how the Alien Bees line of lights are perceived and what they mean; they are about the same as the 18-55 and 55-200 lenses. I think c. cloudwalker's simple post summed it up pretty well and he included the phrase that "most people do not want to hear this but..." preface to help.
I do not understand the lauding of L-glass,over and overf and over, and then the denigration of the higher-end flash systems that have been on the market decades LONGER than Alien Bees. But, that is partly because you've been involved seriously in photography for a little over a year or so, and I have been involved with it for over 25 years; my point of view is from a lot longer perspective,and I've provided a little bit of long-term commentary as to how Buff got his start, and how he has done his marketing. In a word, the Paul C. Buff marketing has had a solid impact on the buyers--most of whom are convinced that their gear is unsurpassed,and that anybody who points out its areas of deficiencies is somehow a traitor or a brand-basher. Let's put it this way: Buff's marketing has to be good, because the equipment is sold directly--there are no stores across America or across the world that carry Buff equipment as dealers. The marketing materials therefore must be very convincing, so that buyers will purchase the stuff sight-unseen. That keeps the buyers OUT of places like Calumet or Samy's or
B&H or Glazer's or ProPhoto Supply, where they might actually lay hands on other brands of lighting and grip equipment.
I think I've sufficiently made my points about how the photography industry views Alien Bees lighting gear; it has many satisfied customers. But the system is not competing with the older brands, or for the same dollars, and it is sold factory-direct; it does not share space on the sales floors in direct competition with other products in the lighting area. If a guy is happy with Alien Bees strobes, fine. I've shot with Sunpak 4000 monolights, Speedotron Brown Line, Speedotron Black Line, Norman, JTL, Dyna-Lite, and Photogenic, since 1987, so my experiences favor systems with very different heritage,and very different marketing and sales strategies besides direct-to-end-user sales. Alien Bees have their own "niche", and no matter how glib the arguments on web boards, the A-B lights cannot be elevated out of their niche. To do that, they would have to be sold in pro photography supply houses, head-to-head on the sales floor against much deeper,broader systems. The A-B is the economy system of Paul C. Buff--White Lightnings and now the Einstein are their higher-end systems. So Paul himself understands the value of different levels and different "quality" levels.
