Thanks guys - that's all good stuff.
I think I can probably rule out buying additional Nikon speedlites... My thinking after a little research and your advice above is...
- my daughter's SB-800 with an umbrella plus one strobe with soft box - both triggered optically by the pop-up flash
- two strobes (I won't have access to my daughter's flash much longer) with umbrella and soft box - again triggered optically
- either of the above, combined with Pocket Wizards or similar radio trigger - not sure if I'd need two receivers, or just one and then slave the other unit optically to the first - I guess having 2 receivers gets around the LoS issue
I know that the answer to the next question is that 'you get what you pay for...' but lookin on ebay, I can see lighting 'kits' from China (sounding alarm bells already) that have a couple of strobes, stands, soft boxes and umbrellas - all for around the same price as a single Alien Bee strobe unit with no accessories. So I expect that build quality will be 'shonky' - and light output less powerful? There was one kit with 180WS strobes and another with 250WS, whereas the AlienBee is 400... Do you think that those kind of units are even
worth considering for an amateur's experimentation? Apart from the risk of burning my house down that is - do you think those cheapo units would be a viable starter purchase, or a waste of money?
Cheers
G