question about lighting

Hi, I'm new here and wanted to see what people thought about studio portrait lights. I've been using just lights I rigged up using stuff from Home Depot for the last few years. I am becoming more serious about it and want to invest in a better system. I found a few choices from BHPhoto and wanted to see what you all thought.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=NavBar&A=getItemDetail&Q=&sku=500422&is=REG&si=rev

This seems to be a very nice set. I'm not sure how much I will benifit from the softboxes over the other I am looking, another reason I am here.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/298604-REG/Impact_401470_Tungsten_Miniboom_Three_Flood.html

is my other option, and has more to the package. I lose the softboxes, but I wanted to know if I could get softboxes for this one later or if it was better to get them now if I really wanted them.

I also do not know if I need to go with flood lights or what. Any suggestions would be helpful to me. Thanks

also I would like to ask what makes some of these kits able to act as a strobe also. people were telling me that they had kits that acted as strobes also. I am kinda lost on that. Anyone have a link or 2 that will help explain this to me? Thanks for taking the time

These lights are continuous lights, not strobes. The modifiers (softboxes) might be adaptable to strobes, but the lights themselves are not.

It will be very difficult to use these for much other than still life/product shots because they don't put out much light, which leads to long exposure times and wide-open aperture settings.

The second link is to a set of hot (tungsten) lights that, while a small improvement over your existing Home Depot lights, have the same issues with brightness, heat, and color temp.

I would look at something like Alien Bee, White Lightning, Bowens, or similar entry-level strobes. You seem to have already "out grown" your hot light setup, you will out grow this kit very quickly also.

Chas

Hey thanks for the reply. Someone also suggested using my sb600 mounted with a extra cable you can get from nikon with my D80. Then getting another 600 or 800 to go with it. Is it possible to use the softboxes with those? Sorry if I sound ignorant on the subject but I really am!

Joe Dubberly said:

Hey thanks for the reply. Someone also suggested using my sb600 mounted with a extra cable you can get from nikon with my D80. Then getting another 600 or 800 to go with it. Is it possible to use the softboxes with those? Sorry if I sound ignorant on the subject but I really am!

Click to expand...

Hi Joe,

You'll probably need more powerful flashes if you really want to move to the next level. While the flashes can be used with small umbrellas or maybe small softboxes (larger ones will need more power), for 'a bit' more money you can have real strobes which will last you much longer because you can expand your choice of modifiers and vary the distance to the subject (which changes the effect of the modifiers).

Bart

Joe

go to http://www.elinchrom.com/
in the downloadsection; you ll find some examples as pdfs...

Check out this site too. Lots of good ideas for lighting with smallish electronic flash units.

However, if you trying to duplicate the effects of lots of powerful lights, you generally need lots of powerful lights.

I ended up going with a SB-800 to go along with my SB-600. I decided the ability to take it on the go easily was worth the extra cash alone. So I bought a umbrella to go with the 800. I am headed out tomorrow to get another light stand and maybe a softbox to go with the other unit. Do you guys think it would be better to go with one of each or keep it the same? So far I'm much more pleased than I thought I would be with the images. I have not had much time to play around with it and I know the TTL system has so much for me to learn it isn't funny!

Any other suggestions on what would help me out at this point? Thanks again for everyone commenting..