There are quite a lot of small inexpensive AC strobe units available today. A basic kit consists of two strobes (for commercial work you will want four), a pair of umbrellas, and stands. You may also want to consider a portable background stand if you are going to be shooting in cluttered places like a store. You can toss in a couple of hotshoe type strobes for background and hair lights using rolled up pasteboard for snoots if you get into serious portrait work, but you won't want to mess with them for location work. I have found 200WS to be powerful enough for this use, for commercial studio work you would want more power (I mention commercial photography only in case you might be thinking of moving into that in the future, it is called thinking ahead <grin>). For the type of work you are talking about modeling lights are optional, I don't have any on my strobes, but I have done this enough to have an idea how the lighting is going to come out from experience.
Most of those strobes have a photo-slave you can fire with your on-camera flash. The next step up is to get a infrared transmitter to use on the camera. But with the prices being what they are today, I would just go with a radio slave unit (note: you can use just one receiver under most circumstances, depending the the built-in optical slaves to fire the other strobes. The exception is places where there are other photographers, or strobe-lights flashing, then you need a receiver for each flash). Umbrellas, for portable use, and portraits, I recommend umbrellas over softboxes, the bigger the better but then they are inconvenient. 36 inches is the best compromise, but if your space is real tight you can get by with 24 inch units. There should be an umbrella clamp on most of those kinds of strobes, but if the ones you get do not have one you will need an umbrella adapter that goes between the flash and the stand. Stands, I suggest 8 footers for location work. Taller is nice but you almost never have room to use them for this kind of shooting. Background support, if you are going to have to horse the kit around yourself, get an aluminum one (applies to the stands as well). I liked the Giotto background stand (and their light stands) for moderately price equipment, however I do not see them advertised much any more. I used to use background paper for location work, and have no experience with cloth backgrounds other than in a studio I used to rent by the hour when I needed a studio. Obviously, it would take a whole book to cover this matter throughly, but the above will give you some idea about what to look at. Also, understand that while the above is based upon experience, my own equipment is ancient, and I can not directly recommend anything current. -- graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" ----------------------------------- David J Brooks wrote: > I am hoping sometime in the new year, to pick up some sort of starter > studio kit, like an umbrella or two etc. > > I'd like to walk into the store and not look like a complete dolt, > just a moderate one<g> so i;'m looking for some advise. > > Whats the best thing to pick up. Should i get a couple of alein bees, > or umbrellas and add some flashes, like Scott is thinking. > > Would it be best to buy something like a transmitter for the camera or > is wired just as good. > > > Space would be small at best. One thing i'm thinking of is shooting in > a small pet store kind of thing. > > Any input or links would be helpfull. Looking for both my systems if > that matters. > > Dave > > Equine Photography in York Region > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
