Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

My dining room serves as a studio. I am considering replacing the overhead light fixture with a strobe for use as a 'hair light.' Since this is an expensive alternative, I want to be able to remove it and use it for other purposes, such as a portable light for outdoor work.

For now, until I can afford more strobes, I will use speedlights as my other strobes. While it might seem odd to use a studio strobe in this manner, it also might be reasonable; no stand to get in the way, and with an adapter it will plug into the existing electrical socket. I am open to other ideas.

Studio strobes are new for me; I don't know how much power I should use, or what features I need. What product do you suggest for this use?

Considering you will be mating it with speedlites, either an Alien Bee 400 or and Einstein 640. These will give you the lowest power settings we offer (Einstein going one stop lower), putting the light in similar territory as speedlites. In case you find you need extra power later, you can upgrade the B400 to an 800 or 1600 within two years, and the Einstein can already match power to a B1600.

This doesn't really impact the "which strobe to get" but you might want to look at it another way.... you could get a B or E-640 to use as a main light and then use a super clamp or justin clamp to mount a speedlight to that ceiling fixture for the hair light. The hair light doesn't need to be that powerful and a speedlight is small and easily mounted and removed via a clamp. This would also give you a more powerful main light and let you more easily use a wide range of modifiers.

This is a much better idea, thank you. I started with the idea of replacing the overhead light and when I concluded that color would be an issue I moved to using a strobe and didn't think of using a speedlight. Thank you.

You're welcome. Just speaking from experience :)