Product Review: Alien Bees ABR800 Ringflash

Design and Style

The ABR800 ringflash is quite small for a ringflash, being only 6 inches deep with reflector mounted. Nevertheless, it looks and feels substantial in the photographers hands. When powered on, the ringflash glows from the front due to it's 8 modeling lamps. Models who are not used to ringflash photography may require some orientation as the lamps and large reflector can be intimidating. In addition, the output from a direct flash is quite high and very bright. At full power, your subject may even feel heat from the flash bulb during exposure.

The ABR800 is encased in an all-black shell with a highly reflective silver inner reflector. The back panel is also black and it's features should be quite familiar to owners of other Alien Bees monolight units (see Operations and Controls).

The ABR800 possesses relatively small dimensions for a ringflash, measuring 8 inches in diameter and 4 1/2 inches deep. Attaching the included 10" diameter reflector increases overall depth to 6". Adding the optional moon unit modifier increases the depth only slightly making it a very compact monolight comparatively. Weighing in at just 2.5 lbs, the ABR800 is lighter than most ringflash units despite having an integrated power supply. The unit's size and weight make it a delight to hand hold during a session.

The unit is hand held by grasping your camera's grip with your right hand while holding the units included handle with the left hand. The placement of the camera platform is adjustable allowing for various size cameras and lenses (up to 4" diameter). Care should be taken when choosing a lens focal length as vignetting may occur with shorter focal lengths when shooting trough the ring. Cameras which have battery packs or vertical grip accessories are also mountable but the thickness of the camera platform may make it difficult to comfortably use the vertical grip shutter release (see photos). In general, shooting in the vertical position is comfortable and natural.

The ABR800 can also be mounted on a tripod, using an included tripod adapter. This allows you to mount your camera and the ringflash together on the tripod for hands free shooting. The tripod mount requires the removal of the handle and light stand assembly. During testing, we successfully mounted the tripod adapter to a quick release tripod head making it easy to take off the tripod and switch to a hand hold (without the handle) for a change in perspective.

The third option for mounting the ABR800 is on a standard light stand (studs up to 5/8"). This is done using the provided light stand connector which is the connector commonly found on other Alien Bees monolights. With your ABR800 mounted to a light stand, you can hand-hold your camera and shoot through the ring in the traditional manner. However, you can also treat this unit as a more traditional light source and move it away from the camera axis. This is especially true when the optional moon unit is mounted as a diffuser. Alien Bees has indicated that more modifiers will soon be available for the ABR800 making it a very flexible addition to your studio. It's light weight also makes it a great candidate for boom mounting and overhead lighting scenarios.

Storage of the ABR800 is straight forward as the reflector protrudes well in front of the bulbs and lamps. Setting the ringflash facing down seems to be a natural way to stow the light during a shoot. In addition, the included bulb protector and diffuser does a great job of guarding the glass from accidental bumps. The camera platform is easily removable for low profile storage or packing for location shoots. It is a nice touch that the reflector and bulb guard are locked into place with a lever on the back panel, eliminating the possibility of accidental dislodging. Replacing bulbs will be straight forward as removing the guard provides direct access to the two half circle tubes and all modeling lamps. The bulb replacement process is well covered in the user's guide.

The provided (120VAC) power cord is 15 feet long and provides plenty of room for wandering around the studio while plugged in. A short 12 inch sync cable (1/8" to PC) is provided for firing the ringflash while hand holding. A longer sync cord would be required when using the ringflash off camera, mounted to a light stand. The sync connection is a standard 1/8" jack, also found on other Alien Bees monolights. The ABR800 is also equipped with a light sensitive slave trigger giving it the ability to be triggered by any other strobe light source. The sync connector and slave sensor are located on the back panel of the unit.

The modeling lights provided with the ABR800 provide a good approximation of the final strobe light quality. The modeling light can track the power of the flash power, showing to be more dim when the flash is set to low power. However, with traditional use being close direct flash, the ringflash appears to the subject to be extremely bright in even the lowest power setting. Therefore, when photographing people it is suggested that the modeling light tracking is left off. This will allow the modeling lamps to be on at full power giving the subject the best appropriation of the flash during exposure. This will also allow the subjects pupils to close down, providing more eye color in the final image. Modeling lamps can also be set to cycle with the flash, turning off after exposure and back on when the ringflash is recharged.