Advice on home setup for portraits

[AndyBakerUK]

Firstly apologies for the long post and amount of questions but may as well try and get everything covered in one place.

My photography preference is outdoors with cars and architecture but with all the bad weather we have and the limited free time I have to get out and about I'd like to start playing with more indoor photograpghy, making use of family and pets as test subjects.

I want to setup some gear to do this but one of my requirements is nothing too bulky (I already have far too many gadgets and toys taking up space around the house). With this in mind I was thinking of avoiding dedicated mains powered flash lamps and working with speedlites, also making it fairly portable.

So with the above in mind I was thinking of the following setup, the 580exII I already have being setup off camera via a sync cable firing into a softbox/umbrella for main fill, a reflector alongside it to help with directional light, and then a secondary speedlite setup behind subjects to light the background (this being triggered by the 580).

So now with all the questions:-

1) Does this sound like a practical/useable setup?
2) If so which speedsite would be best as a slave unit (430ex, 430exII, or something else)?
3) Which sync cable, Canon branded or third party via ebay?
4) Recommendations for an umbrella (inc stand?) and reflector?
5) What's recommended for a good white background?

Lastly..

6) If the above setup isn't recommended what alternative should I consider?

Many thanks for any help given,
Andy

 

[Purvins]

If you are looking to find good slave flashes, have a look at the old nikon flashes such as the SB24, SB26 and SB26. I use a canon camerahouse with 2 SB800s, a SB28 and a SB24, works like a charm.

I have a hard time imagining that the brand of the synccable will make any differance. I recently shorted one of mine from 5m to 20cm, and it's basicly just two colorcoded cables inside, so I cant see how they can fail with those two cables.

I use the Elinchrom umbrellas and stands, mainly since I found a kit of two umbrellas and two stands quite cheap, but I'm not sure if you can find those particular kits outside Sweden.

Good luck and hope this was of some help.

 

[AndyBakerUK]

Thanks, took a quick look on ebay and there were a few UK based sellers selling Elinchrom kit.

Anyone else got any advice?

Also I'm assuming you need additional clamps to connect the umbrellas/flashes to the stands?

Thanks

 

[AndyBakerUK]

Also just seen this thread with an all in lighting kit, bulkier but maybe easier to get me started.

Any opinions on a home lighting solution to get me going, would really appreciate anyones advice with this.

Thanks.

 

[Jelster]

The "all in one" studio kits are really useful if you haven't got some of the kit already. I have a couple of normal flashguns with some home made diffusers, but no stands or brollies etc, so a lit like this is useful for me, and I'm putting it in the garage as well.

So I guess it depends on how much you're going to use it and what you want to get from it. I'm hoping that, once I have the kit, I can use the stands & brollies with the flash units if I go outside.

Steve