Gear for environmental portraits

[pbless]

<p>Hello,<br>

I excuse for my ignorance considering lighting equipment. <br>

To begin with, while I was doing environmental portraits i always used natural lighting + reflector, i often abused my surrounding to get the lighting right (setting sun, reflecting light from walls, etc). But i came to understanding to that if i want to grow i will need another light source (especially for several projects i have in mind) because such "manipulations" usually leaves artefacts which take time to correct.<br>

So i started looking at studio kits, elichrome (2 light set, D-lite) , bowen gemini (2 studio lights), as well as flash (Metz 58 af2, Canon speedlites). While the flashes give me easy portability i am not sure about their use for diffused light for portraiture and their suitability for more spacious portraits (seriously, the only time i used a flash, i needed AF assistance). The two studio kits seem interesting for me (both around £500) but i don't know if they can be easily used on locations such as forest, streets where there's nowhere to plug them in. <br>

So my budget is around £500 (~800$). Hopefully i covered all you need to know. <br>

Cheers,<br>

Paulius</p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>Go over to <a href="http://www.strobist.com">www.strobist.com</a> It's all about using portable, shoe-mount flash to achieve studio-quality results. It's written by a former newspaper photogrpaher and one of his routine type of assignments was environmental portraits of everyone from school teachers to CEOs.</p>

[pbless]

<p>Craig, thanks a lot! </p>

[marc_david]

<p>If you want to be able to use big light modifiers, overpower the sun etc., you'll need actual strobes. I have the Bowens Gemini kit (200w/s). This is probably the bare minimum in terms of power you'd want/need in order to shoot outdoors. Depending on the type of look/shot you are going for, 200w/s may not suffice ( ie if you need to a use a big octabox and need to place it 10 feet away from the subject). You can buy(Not cheap) or rent battery packs from Bowens to take on location.</p>