Studio Lighting For Beginners

[Mamalene105]

I am looking to purchase some studio lighting. I am new to the photography world and am still learning. I recently have been taking a lot of outdoor pics and am looking at starting indoor ones with the winter weather approaching I am thinking of purchasing two strobe lights with umbrellas. Is this a good beginners choice? If not, what would you suggest? Also, is there a brand or set you would recommend. I looked on ebay but have no clue as to what the differences are in the sets???

[tycooder]

If your just starting I would suggest 1 light and an umbrella that you can shoot through or reflect
you can make a reflector from white board. learn what your doing with one light and beleive me you can do a lot with one light and a reflector to fill the shadows on the opposite side of your main. When you get one light down then you can expand your setup Im very happy with my alien bees I got 1 ab800 to start with and am learning as I go along. go on youtube and search studio lighting there are many helpful videos there and read and ask questions ..and most of all shoot a lot. your going to be working in the manual mode iso100 if possible and 125th f8-f11 experiment with white balance 5300-5400 flash and event auto white balance have fun a whole new world awaits you

[candleman]

yeah.. thats a good start.. two strobes.

basically you have three choices.

1. hot lights (dont flah, super cheap, but is hot and burns stuff.. so its harder to "modify" the light
2. AlienBee type Monolights (expensive.. but very hightquality, mught higher control
3. Speedlight strobe kit

i went for number three (heres a link to our DPS thread) because they are light, portable.. and pretty cheap if you buy them used.

check out Strobist

heres a "preliminaries" video to show you what the stuff looks like and the basics of it all.