Steve, I'll give you my 2 cents worth. For diffusing the light, Lumiquest makes a softbox that velcros on to your flash. It does a reasonable job and can be used even when the flash is in the hotshoe of your camera. Cost is about $25. Use a couple of wein optical slaves, hook one flash up to your camera through 5p cord and two hotshoe adapter F's. So one flash is hooked to the camera through the 5p stuff and has a softbox on it, one flash is used for fill with slave trigger and softbox and a third can be used for background fill with an optical slave. Use them on manual mode and adjust light output by moving the lights if they don't have multiple power settings. You may need to invest in a lightstand or two.
It would be most ideal to use a flash meter, but if not, you could burn a couple of rolls of slide film testing at different f stops to see how things looked. Bruce Dayton Saturday, March 23, 2002, 5:36:17 PM, you wrote: SP> I'm looking to do some friends' (as well as possibly SP> some semi-pro) jobs/portraits in the near future. I SP> would like input from anyone who has a "portable" SP> lighting system. What type of equipment do you have, SP> how much will it cost me, etc. I'm leaning towards a SP> slave system. I'm not sure if that's the right way to SP> go. I'm just starting my research into this equipment. SP> My current equipment is Pentax Super Program manual SP> focus: SP> 100 mm 2.8 lens SP> 135 mm 2.8 SP> AF200T SP> Vivitar 283 SP> Can I get good results by simply using the Vivitar SP> 283, bounced into an umbrella? I've been thinking SP> about a newer, bigger, better Pentax flash (280, 400, SP> 550, etc.). Would this be a good combo to bounce from SP> the camera? And still use the 283 & the AF200T? SP> What about a cheap & portable back drop-any SP> recommendations there? SP> What about a flash meter-any SP> suggestions/recommendations for brand, model, price, SP> etc.? SP> Any ideas & suggestions would be greatly appreciated! SP> Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards� SP> http://movies.yahoo.com/ SP> - SP> This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, SP> go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to SP> visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
