Lighting kit for my Pentax 645nII - Dyna-lite?

I have been searching around for quite a while trying to get an idea

for a lighting kit for my 645 and 35mm cameras. I come from a

television production background and have worked - sometimes not

well - with fresnels, softlights, chimeras ect... doing on location

corporate video and studio work. I have a pretty good location grip

kit with gels, scrims, and a couple of flex fills, ect... that I

bring into work with me. What I don't have is any flash (cold)

lights for use in studio photography. I have a small studio that I

am setting up in my house (15'-17') that I want to do some table top

and portraiture. What I really want is a lighting system that I

can "grow" into and add on to in the future, it also needs to be

durable and able to fine tune the light. I have been looking at the

Dyna-lite packs and heads. Would a 500 series pack with two heads

have enough light for table top (some macro too) and portraiture, or

should I be considering the 1000 series packs? Also, what is the

operative difference between the ER and DR packs? What I mean by

this is that I have read the manuals and the website at Dyna-lite for

the differences, but I would just like to know from people who have

used the packs how the differences are missed in the real world. I

am going to have a chance in the next week to get to Calumet in

Chicago and try to play around with the lights they have on display,

but I just want extra knowledge before I buy. Thanks for all your

help. - keith

I have had Dynalites 1000 packs since '87 and they are still going strong.

VERY clean and dependable light. To answer your question about the 500

packs, for macro and table top stuff your going to want to have the most DOF

and by using 2 lights from a 500 your getting 250 w/s per head... not really

enough when you need to shoot with a softbox and f32... try to go up to the

1000 packs. They are almost as small but 2 heads will get you 500 w/s per

head. I have used them from table top 4x5 products to room sets and have

never been lacking with 2 packs and 6 heads. Most of the time, when shoot

table top stuff, I have a large or Xlarge softbox and reflectors so I'm getting full

1000w/s out of the head. The heads can be changed up according to which

way your shooting, whether it be symmetrical or asymmetrical which means

from the full pack or from 2 separate banks of the pack. This way you can

have 500 w/s from one light and 250 w/s between the other 2 lights on the

other side of the pack. The only real difference between the ER and the DR is

that the DR has the slave which does come in handy!!! You could have

another pack/head setup or a regular flash used on camera to fire the DR by

switching over to the synch setting. I have both of my packs that have the

synch and have used them many times but that is the only way they came

when I bought mine... looking at the prices now, you can get a really good

Wein slave for a 1/4 of the difference...