Basic Studio Lighting on a Serious Budget

Okay, so when I post a question, the answer is usually "you can't do

what you want for the amount of money you have to spend." Lol. Well,

here goes, I've been doing everything with natural light or existing

light and want to get some strobes/monolights/????. I know about as

much about the mechanics of how these blasted things work as I do

about the engineering in the space shuttle.

 

First, I have a budget of around US$500. Anemic, I know. I have never

used strobes of any kind (I'm not crazy about the F80s on-camera

flash, and only use it for fill flash. I read on one of the threads

that a couple of Sunpak 544s (or was it 455s?) would be great for

learning about studio lighting (and have the side bennefit of actually

being a useful strobe, unlike the built-in). Can anyone tell me if

there are difusers, umbrellas, or ??? available for these?

 

Second, I shoot 35mm and have seen in a couple of places that 500ws is

about a minimum. It has occurred to me to get a couple of 200-250ws

monolights and a smaller one (I am envisioning a main light,

background light, and possibly one to focus in on a particular area,

like hair, face, or ???). Having a modelling light (which I assume the

Sunpak solution above doesn't) seems like a real plus. UNFORTUNATELY,

anything like Alien Bees is 1.) way out of my budget or 2.) not

available in Taiwan.

 

Portability is a major issue, and battery power is a real plus (I can

get an inverter and 12v battery really cheaply here if necessary).

There are about a dozen places I want to shoot that don't have

electricity (the Sunpak solution solves this one).

 

Next, for the really dumb question. I understand the concept of

optical slaving, a flash triggers another by the presence of its

light. However, what do you use to actually get the camera (F80) to

trigger the master in the first place?

 

And (finally) I assume I'll need a flash meter (I assume that TTL

metering doesn't work for flash....nuthin' to meter on until the flash

goes off). Unfortunately, the flash will have to come from the same

budget as the lights. Any suggestions?

 

In general, I'm tending toward portraits.

I get a lot of work out of Vivitar 285/283 units triggered with optical slaves. They come with synch cords and you can plug a Wein peanut slave into that PC connector. You can use the in-camera flash to set them off, using a small piece of paper to keep the light off your subject.

I use a Canon A70 on manual mode to check the lighting. On manual it does not fire a pre-flash. You can't really rely on the screen to judge exposure, but I do know that if the screen looks somewhat over-exposed then my film will be pretty close. A Canon A60 would do the same job for less money. But you probably need a flash meter. I like my Sekonic L308 pretty well.

Here's a picture I shot yesterday.

 

The main source of light was 3 Vivitar 285's and one 283 bounced off the ceiling, giving me slightly less than f8 at ISO 100.

Nikon make a AS 10 and AS 15, you mount this on your hot shoe and plug in your sync cord to that and go. If your into portable strobe without cords there's the SU-4. There are also a lot of other units that will mount in the hot shoe to trigger your system.

TLL does work with flash depending on the unit, some like the SB-26 have the built in slave feature. I building a set-up with the F80 hooked to the SC-17 with a sb-28 mounted to that into an umbrella as my fill and another SB-28 on the SU-4 as my main. I haven't totaled up the cost but I'll probably be in the $500 range but the time Im done. I picked up everything but my umbrellas used here on this site or on the bay and Im looking forward to setting-up. I figured this way I have the stands,etc. so I can get started and save some money for the big guns.

Good luck

Hmmmm...I think I see how this works, and actually understand it. So...I would get a wireless trigger of some kind, then mount the two strobes in umbrellas on stands (can I attach some sort of modelling light in there?). I don't mind wires going between the two strobes, so that is easy. I could then adjust the flash power on the two strobes (one for main light, the other for background, for example...say if I wanted a slightly darker background). If both strobes are TTL, I would then set the aperture I wanted to use for DOF and the strobes would automatically lower their power for wide apertures?? Is that it (as I said, this IS rocket science to me...I understand light, but the )#@#$@$# mechanics of getting it there is what gets me...my background is theater...very simple, hot lights with a big ole dimmer switch).