After hearing so many posts and articles about how good the Alien Bee strobes and light modifiers are, I did a bit of investigation into buying them in the UK. Unfortunately, the US company that makes Alien Bees (Paul C Buff Inc) doesn’t ship outside of the USA and have appointed an Australian company to ship Alien Bee products to customers outside of the US. So, in order to get them shipped, you have to order them from the Australian company who then order them from the US!

Seems like a lot to go through but if you have time, it’s definitely worth it. They’re great strobes and weirdly, even after all the shipping and import duty the alien bees still work out cheaper than a comparable lighting system bought in the UK (I calculated the price of a similar order of Bowens lighting from Calumet’s online store which turned out to be a good deal more expensive).  I ordered 2 x Alien Bee 800 strobes, an Alien Bee 1600 strobe, an ABR800 ring flash, 2 x vagabond batteries, a beauty dish with grid, 2 x softboxes plus one extra large softbox and a 30″ moon unit for the ring flash.