Bare Bulb Flash vs B800 with battery pack

Vipmediastar_JZ

I volunteered to do an event thinking it would be a small group. Wrong It will be a group of 22 people indoors and outdoors.

What I have is 2-b800 and two speedlights that all will work with each other via slave, I can trigger a speedlight and cause the rest to be a slave and vice versa with the b800. I would just need to buy a battery pack for the b800's.

Or

Look into a bare bulb flash equivalent/comparable to the b800 in power 300w +.

So now that you know my scenario does anybody have experience with these bare bulb lights?

Im thinking I could use at least a 3 light setup in this situation.

The ones I looked into where the Godox Wistro ad360, Adoramas Flashpoint streaklight 360 and B&H Bolt VB-22 360 version.

For modifiers Ill probably be using umbrellas on b800, for speedlight softbox, for bare bulb that will come to play later if needed.

thanks in advance for your input.

(the new indra360 2 light kit looks tempting but not in budget as of today and probably wont arrive for the event on time).

Rx4Photo

Just my opinion @ Vipmediastar_JZ but personally I wouldn't look to purchase more gear than you already have if this is purely volunteer work. Sure, you want to present professionally and provide a solid end product but you're looking at putting out money for something that you may or may not need again real soon.
That said, I'd consider using what you already have to its fullest potential. You probably have enough light to light that group if you have umbrellas on both flashes or (Alien Bee's?) and each on a stand and tweaking ISO. Sure, battery packs might be necessary depending on how much shooting you'll do. You didn't mention whether you'd be shooting in daylight or into the night so I'm not sure with that.

Last weekend I was the official photographer (Daddy) for my twin daughters' 13 year birthday party. Many shots were under a large pavallion at a local park so I wound up with a backlight situation. I kept it simple and shot SB-910 aimed vertically on camera and ended up decreasing flash exposure due to over exposure on the first few images. There were up to 18 kids doing their crazy poses and the results were pretty amazing if I might say so. I'd think two remotely triggered speedlights on properly placed stands should work fine for you for 22 (+/-) people.

Photobug

Rx4Photo - please share on PAD some of those images of the kids.
My experience is the same about kids doing their crazy poses. My grand kids are 4 & 6 so by your post it sounds like I will have plenty of photo opportunities into their teens.

Vipmediastar_JZ

Thanks for the input. I wasn't expecting a large group really. The shoot will be outdoors on a fancy bridge over a river. Looking at the map the subjects will probably be facing west at 3-5pm. The location is 3 hours away so I cant scout it anytime soon.

The last time i had this scenario the trees and branches ended up casting un welcomed shadows bUt the view was beautiful.

I been toying around getting rid of the b800 for a while now thats why I considered the bare bulbs for the power.
I did reach out to bnh and they hinted to go with the b800. It is more bulk than i planned on having that day including light stands.

I suppose ill be shooting manual at 1/250 f8-f11 with the large group.
It's still too cold to do a test neighborhood shoot outdoors.

Oh for those of you with using manual flash do you recommend a light meter?
The b800's are triggered via the cyber commander that has a flash meter and power levels can be adjusted remotely.