Hi fellow Pentax users, I have been studying online how to work with studio lighting, and I rented a 400ws monolight over the weekend to try things out. My girlfriend, as always, was the real photographer, but now she can concentrate with her photography with my full support in lighting. She borrowed a digital camera to immediately see the effects. We rented a hotel room to do portraits for a couple who's just got married, and some glamour/lingerie for another lady. We used these friends as guinea pigs for our experiments.
I have a bunch of hot shoe flashes, the top of which was a 120J TTL. That day I just pointed that to the roof at 1/16 power, and it wasn't doing anything but trigger the real strobe. I have a small Vivitar 4600 bare bulb flash with built-in slave. I was expecting it could serve as background light or fill light or whatever, but it was a total failure for the 4600. I just didn't have the proper reflector to use it effectively. The 120J has about 150ws already. I was thinking, maybe I could do something to use it as a hairlight, a background light or a fill light. But what do I need in order to make that happen ? First I need a stand, but how do I put a shoe mount flash on a light stand ? As a side note I also do music and is there some stands out there which can hold both microphones and lights. Well forget that if it is a stupid idea. I guess I would need honeycomb or barn doors for hair light... The 120J has a norman type reflector. And then I would need a slave trigger for it. Am I missing anything ? I didn't rent a softbox, but is the weight of a soft box supported by the strobe or by the stand ? Sorry for such a stupid question but I am still a beginner. The 120J won't be able to hold anything heavy. Throughout that day I seldom use the flash I rented past 1/2 power and I've heard there was a rule of thumb to buy twice the power as you need so 400ws seems to be just right. We are getting apertures like f/22 with ISO 100 film but my girlfriend says she likes that and sometimes we use medium format which requires a smaller f-stop. I want to limit my investment to one monolight at this time because I want to master one light, and plus the 120J I already have at the most (2 lights) before I acquire more gear. Any recommendations on good/inexpensive monolights are greatly appreciated. (For 1-2 people portraits and glamour.) Any other tips ? Thanks in advance. -- Bo-Ming Tong
