Walmart Bulbs..

[Benji]

Ebay has them all the time. Here is a kit of three a/c powered units for $250.00 SP Studio System Strobe Kit - eBay (item 230257930147 end time Jun-07-08 12:13:39 PDT)

Benji

P.S. I own at least one of each of these flash units shown in the ad above. The big one (at left in the image) I bought about 15 years ago and it still works! I have about 10 of the middle one and two of the smaller one at the right.

[RvA944]

Benji,

Thank you for the heads up on the strobes!! I was looking at a little bit diffent set myself... what do ya think of these?

Smith-Victor | FL140 3 Light Studio Kit with Boom Arm | 401514

Thanks again,

Roger

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by Benji

Save yourself a lot of headaches and $$$ and buy a couple of the little Chinese flash units. $75.00 will get you a 100 watt second unit that is ready to go with umbrella holder, modeling lamp and it will, power wise, equal about 20 of the Wal Mart bulbs.

Benji

There is a lot to be said for shooting with photo floods. I know I started with them and it allowed me to work through the issues of light fall off and how to visualize the light. Flash will save you the headache of learning how drag your shutter and visualize the area that will be lit but I say Bully for you if you take the time to learn with "real" lights instead of going straight to flash.

In my other post I had asked what the shutter speeds were and the reason for this was to see if they were simply going with higher shutter speeds or if they were learning to balance the light sources through dragging the shutter.

What ever works for you is the best for you. Remember you learn something each time you try something!

[RvA944]

Rodeoshooter,

ISO 400 S80 F5.6 And was still underpowered!!

Best,

Roger

[Rodeoshooter]

Originally Posted by RvA944

Rodeoshooter,

ISO 400 S80 F5.6 And was still underpowered!!

Best,

Roger

Roger,

I don't know about the underpowered. I just re-looked at all of the photos and I don't see an issue with underpower. You could have dropped the shutter speed to 1/40th of a second or 1/30th and gained an entire F-stop of light. Sometimes when doing weddings I will "drag" the shutter down to 1/4th of a second along with the flash to get the "look" of how the church is in real time. Dragging the shutter will make things happen that you won't notice at faster shutter speeds. In this case you could have since you were shooting mostly still lifes went as low as 30 seconds for the exposure or longer. For example if you were at 1/60th of a second at F5.6 you could have also went with the following shutterspeeds and F-stops at 200 ISO/ASA.

1/60 - f4
1/30 - f5.6
1/15 - f8
1/8 - f11
1/4 - f22
1/2 - f32
1sec - f45

At 100 ISO / ASA you could have done the following:

1/60 - f2.8
1/30 - f4
1/15 - f5.6
1/8 - f8
1/4 - f11
1/2 - f22
1sec - f32
2sec - f45

So here you could have gained some more detail in the image and since it was still life you would most likely be on the tripod.

[RvA944]

Rodeoshooter,

I took the Wallyworld bulb and put it in a makshift softbox and tried it for a hairlight. Even with the strobes running really low power the one bulb just wasn't making enought light to do what I wanted. I'm sure if I had 2 or maybe even 3 of them burning in there it would have worked out ok. But at the distance of a 3 feet up and right of my daugther it just wasn't making it. So I went out and got another SB-600 now I have three to play with. Of cousre I could have just gotten a set of mono's but I really wanted something I could take infield too... henceforth the SB's. I'll have my last mount tommorow so I can start to play with the three SB's and see what kind of damge I can do. Now where did i put that foam board again

Best,

Roger

PS Of course I'll be bugging the wife now for a set on mono's now how long till christmas