HSS & studio strobes

Question

Using the mini tt1 and flex tt5, can you HSS studio strobes, like alien bees? If you could, will they 'sync' up to the same shutter speeds as speed lights?

For instance, to shoot at f/1.4 at noon or sunset, I shoot in excess of 1/2500 sec, and the power loss of the speed lights requires me to always seem to need more speed lights. I'd prefer if possible to HSS a couple alienbees, but not heard if this is possible.

Answer 1

You can use higher shutter speeds than your sync speed, but it is not "true" HSS. PocketWizard calls this feature "Hypersync."

In "true" HSS, with hotshoe flashes, the flash sets out a serious of pulses timed to go with the travel of the curtain slit across the sensor so the whole sensor is evenly illuminated by the flash. This is not what Hypersync does.

Hypersync (or "tail sync") is taking advantage of the fact that at higher power levels, the duration of a flash pulse is longer. And that at high enough shutter speeds and high enough flash power levels, the tail end of the flash (which is more even in illumination than the beginning of the main burst), will cause less of a gradient across the screen. With tail sync, the sync of the camera shutter is after the main burst has passed. This tends to use more power than HSS, and is highly dependent on the pulse length of the individual strobe.

I'm not sure how it behaves with AlienBees, and googling around the 'net it looks like the behavior of hypersync is inconsistent with the Bees, so I'd do some search on your specific AB model and how it behaves with PocketWizard's Hypersync.