I am a big fan of my Nikon flashes and the flexibility that the creative lighting system gives me. That said, I am increasingly aware of the limitations of the kit despite the softboxes and modifiers we have. As we start to take on more paid work, I feel it it time to invest in some decent studio lights.
I am minded to have a couple for the background and a couple for main and fill light. We can then add additional lights (if we find we need them) later on. I fully appreciate what can be achieved with natural light and just one light and a reflector. We want more creative and control options.
The investment will be for studio use. We have a large house and plenty of room to leave equipment in place. We also plan to convert our very large, extra high double garage into a studio at some point. Whatever we invest in has to be good for use in the "garage" studio.
Given that we are not full time professional studio photographers and are not shooting every day, we have to get the balance right between good quality equipment that will last a while and take standard add on kit without investing in high end gear. I have tried out some small sets that friends have a few times, but found these no better (and often worse) than the SB800 and SB600 flashguns I use wirelessly with my Nikon cameras, so I know entry level kits will not cut the mustard.
My wife and I are heading off to the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC at the backend of Febuary and expect there will be some good offers on kit there.
There are so many brands to choose from though, so suggestions on which products and features to look for would be appreciated. I guess making sure that anything we buy can take say Bowens S fittings (do I have that right?) would give us a lot of flexibility regarding light modifiers.
We will want to use studio lights for full lenth and family portraits as well as group shots and we will want to be able to colour the background with gels as we wish. We will be able to plug the lights into the mains, so battery convenience is not a major factor (although an option for the future to be able to add packs would be useful).
Is there any kit as controllable as the Nikon CLS system, i.e. able to control the settings of all of the lights individually from one unit (not the camera in such a case, I realise)? This is probably a luxury option as is not that much of a burden to walk around to the lights and set them properly and I do not want to be messing with the settings all the time anyway. Wireless triggering rather than using sync cables would be good though.
Recommendations, suggestions, links would be most welcome.
TIA,
Stuart
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