Alien Bees vs. Cactus V2 trigger & receivers

You may remember the crazybooth project I wrote about last month. While at that photo shoot, I learned a very valuable lesson; You get what you pay for. I know what you are saying, that’s not exactly a new lesson. True as that may be, when it comes to wireless flash triggers, I had no idea how apparent it would be.

During the crazybooth shoot, I’d say we had an optimal shooting setup to allow the Cactus V2 remote trigger & receivers to work perfectly. The trigger and receivers were no more than 7 feet away from each other and they were in direct line-of-sight. Unfortunately, we learned quickly that they were going to fire the flash roughly 1 out of every 3 or 4 times we clicked a shot. If we were doing product photography with a stationary, unchanging item, this wouldn’t have been a big deal. But, in a crazybooth setting, missing a shot with real emotion, a funny face, a great smile, etc… well, it can ruin your whole shoot.

After the crazybooth incident, I went out and purchased a set of Alien Bees triggers (1) & receivers (2). When they first arrived we did a very non-scientific test to test their range. I sat in one office with the receiver while a friend walked around snapping photos around the other offices, even going inside and shutting the doors. No matter what elements we threw at it, they performed more than 95% of the time. This brought up it’s own questions, though. Exactly how far away can you be from the remote and still have it flash? I had to find out for myself.

This evening I grabbed a tripod, flash and umbrella and set them up on the sidewalk in front of my house. I then grabbed a tape measure and some chalk. I started off by making 13 chalk marks, 10 feet apart, starting 10 feet away from the flash. I then put on the Cactus V2 trigger and receiver and started snapping.

I’m using a prime 20mm lens at f/4.0 with a 1/60 shutter speed.

The first 5 shots (50 feet away on the last one) worked fine, as I expected they would. At 60 feet away, my first shot showed a dark umbrella. I thought it didn’t fire. I then held the camera away from my eye and fired the trigger. I saw the flash go off, but chimping showed a dark umbrella again. A few more tests and at 1/60, I was not able to get the flash to sync with the trigger. However, it was still firing. I moved back to 70 and 80 feet and it took 3 tries at each location to get a flash. At 90 feet, I was officially out of range.

Next came the Alien Bees. The first 5 shots were fine, as expected. When I moved to shot 6 (60 feet), I was curious to see if I was going to run in to the syncing issue I had with the Cactus V2s. As I had hoped, there was no sync issue. I made may with rough the next few shots until I was standing on #13, 130 feet away. The flash went off as expected and still, no sync issues. Back, back, back I went. 150, 180, 200, 240, 260, 280 feet away. Every shot was perfect. No sync issue and the flash fired on the first try time and time again. At 290 feet was the first miss-fire. It took 3 shots for the flash to go off. Still I moved back. In my final shot, I was 325 feet away from the flash. It fired on the first try and still had no sync issues. I could have tried moving back further, but I would have been trespassing on a neighbor’s lawn.

To sum up, as far as I can tell, the Alien Bees are completely worth the investment. Each shot taken within a “normal” distance fired the flash every time. I didn’t have a miss-fire until I was almost 300 feet away. The fact that I don’t have a lens that would make shooting from 300 feet away all that useful anyway leads me to believe this isn’t going to be a problem I’m going to run in to any time soon.

Here are a couple shots to give you an idea of the Alien Bee’s range.