580EX fires alien bees 1600 no syncords attached? is this set up reliable? help?

[Jay25]

I just bought two alien bees. Got a 1600 and a 400. I just got the 1600 I set my Canon 580 EX flash to master, fired my canon and the alien bees flash fired too. The alien bees has nothing attached to it, just power cord thats it. No sync cord or anything. Can I use this set up or do I still need to spend the cash to get the Pocket Wizard plus II? Any input from any of you guys that know alot about external flashes? Id really appreciate your input. I know that that Nikons have the ability to fire the alien bees too. Any of you guys find this set up reliable? I will be taking pictures at parties and other events and dont want to take some crappy photos because that flashes did not fire properly.

[ziggy53]

I moved this to the Technique forum.

When you set the Canon 580EX flash to "Master" mode it fires a "pre-flash" ahead of the main flash. The pre-flash is intended to communicate with compatible remote wireless flashes the information to coordinate exposure between the master and slaved flashes.

Unfortunately, an AlienBee monolight only has a simple optical slave and will trigger on the first pulse it senses from the pre-flash of the 580EX.

If you set the 580RX on "Manual" mode it will only emit a single pulse of light and the AlienBee flashes will sync properly. You will lose any flash automation but the AlienBees are not compatible with Canon wireless flash automation so you should plan on all manual flash anyway.

[jbakerphoto]

I have used the optical slaves in the alien bees at a couple of barrel races. I was never really impressed using it that way as it was very unreliable. I would get a lot of no fires. I recently invested in some RF602 on ebay. They work pretty good. Unfortunately they don't sync at 250 but I can usually get good results at 200. Hope that helps.