Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I need to setup a semi-dedicated studio for shooting furniture (starting furniture business).

Here is what I have already when it comes to lighting:
Nikon D300
SB800 flash with light stand and umbrella
2 pocket wizards II

What I want to buy is the following
2 alienbees flash units
2 lightstands
2 40" softboxes

My thinking is to use the two alienbees flash units for main light and fill light, and use my sb-800 for background light if needed.

My questions are:
Seeing as I'm not going to be doing any portrait shots or have need to freeze motion. What size of flash units can I get away with? Are two B800 ok?
Can I get away from buying more pocket wizards by doing the following, one transceiver on camera, second on main light, sync cord from main light to fill and sync cord from fill to sb-800. Is that possible?

Thank you for any help

I personally don't think that will be enough.

I shoot a lot of furniture (with a D300) and I use 5 AB800's with softboxes, one in each corner and one on a boom above. Sometimes I even use a 6th one positioned underneath to illuminate the underneath areas of tables and desks. I suppose you could use the SB800 for that...

Since you are not shooting movement, you have the advantage of not needing more powerful strobes. If you need more DoF than your lighting will give you, you can leave the shutter open longer, and fire the lights multiple times. You should be fine with the number of remotes you have now. You can daisy chain them as described, but all of the lights you listed have an optical slave eye built in. When one light fires, the others will as well. (there are some exceptions to this, but it generally works well). As for the number of lights, it really depends on the size and finish of the final product and what you want the photo to look like.