Advice on used strobe for outdoor portrait work

[paul_abajian]

I make my living shooting commercials, but know very little about strobes. I'm looking to purchase one

strobe possibly with a battery pack to shoot portraits of my kids. I started looking online and on this site

to learn more, but I'm more confused than ever. How many watts/sec. do I need? Any natural lighting

shots I've done in the past tend to be shot around f4.5/5.6 with a 200mm lens. I already have a small

Chimera for my Arri lights (though it is made of heavier material) and I only want to spend a few hundred

dollars tops. I'll probably put my kids in the shade and bounce a hair light in off of a reflector and use a

white board as fill. Also, what size soft box do I need or should I just use umbrellas. I welcome anybody's

thoughts.

[david_peak]

You won't get much for a couple of hundred dollars. I rekon your best bet is to perhaps buy one or two flashguns, some cheap stands to mount them on, attach brollys to one or both of the flashguns ( buy special brackets / holders that will allow you to do this ) Wire up the sync leads or use a radio slave.... Meter the light output, or guess the exposure and check your polaroid or your digital back. If you buy a flashgun which you want to bounce into an umbrella you lose abou a stop of light so get a decent powerful one that has a guide number of at least 45 or more . ( umbrellas and softboxes pretty much do the same thing )

 

Hope this helps !

 

Dave

[timcorridan]

why a batterry pack? (wich significantly raises your wishlist price.)

[ellis_vener_photography]

A Lumadyne or Norman 400B or C should do the trick. Beyond that an Alien Bees B1600 and

their Vagabond battery pack.

[james_osborne]

If you want outdoors capabilities thenyou are pretty much 'limited' to flashguns rather than teh Alien Bees/Bowens style studio strobes that need AC power.

 

That said I use flashguns outdoors for exactly this reason. My expensive Elinchrom stobes are used only in studio or indoors.

 

Have a look at www.strobist.com for some excellent examples of what can be achieved with $100 worth of kit. I can recommend the Nikon SB26 flashgun, even if you dont shoot Nikon, I mean you will almost certainly want to shoot in Mnaula mode anyway for maximum control so why bother buying the all bells and whistles SB800 for $400?. You can get a used SB26 on Ebay for $50! Buy a lightstand, some cheap ebay radio triggers and maybe an umbrella and umbrella holder and you are set.

 

Read lots of info on balancing ambient & fill, and practice!

 

Jim