A Quick Review: The AlienBees Setup

As I've mentioned several times over the past week, I purchased a set of AlienBees strobes. I just wanted to give a quick review on them.

• Setup: the lights, stands, and umbrellas were all extremely easy to setup. I probably didn't even need to read the instructions (but I did anyway just to be safe).
• Build Quality: these lights seem like they are very well put together. The weight is appropriate, the shell seems very sturdy and durable, and the controls in the back are very usable. As for the stands and umbrellas, they too have a great build quality: not flimsy at all, and sit and hold their positions very well.
• Usage: After using the set for a few days, I can say I'm very happy and very impressed with the results I'm getting. Considering this is my first go at using off-camera, studio-style strobes, the images I'm getting are excellent (see the sample below).
• Flexibility: I've been playing with multiple setups; two front lights spread at 30°, two lights spread at 180°, one front-camera-right and one background camera-left, etc. I feel that, for a beginner, two strobes is the perfect number to have.

Here's an example of one of the many setups I've tried; sorry for the poor quality, the panorama app I used didn't stitch very well:

One of the photos captured using the above setup:

Here's an example using the lights in front, camera-left and camera-right at approximately 30°:

Like I said, I'm very happy with the results thus far. I feel like all that's left is practice, research, and more learning. I can only hope my photos keep improving, and thanks to the new AlienBees setup, I don't think that will be a problem.