Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hi all - I'm building a basement (8') studio for portrait and fashion photography and want to get a set of lights that will be versatile, give me a good amount of creative freedom, and hopefully long-lasting. My experience so far has been with my Nikon Speedlights and RadioPoppers.

I do weddings and plan on sticking with my Speedlights for location work for the time being; I'll likely move to Vagabond Minis in the future.

Is this a reasonable, versatile set-up? What should I reconsider?

5x Einsteins: key, fill, hair, 2x background (white seamless), or variations on that theme
3x Soft white 64" PLM (key and fill, with the option to use all 3 for beauty or wider lighting)
1x 22" High Output Beauty Dish (white)
Cyber Commander

A couple of 7" reflectors and 3x 8.5" high output reflectors for hair, more directional lighting, or background.

Then 3x c-stands with booms and 2x background stands (I already have a few straight light stands kicking around, along with a white/silver reflector).


I realize that there will be things that I learn as I go, but are there any red flags in there that you with more experience than I have would do differently?

Thanks!

Darryl

3x on the PLMs seems like overkill to me, unless you are getting white, silver, & extreme to have options. I'd also want to have grids for the 8" reflectors and the BD, and at least one soft box with a grid.

I would consider getting 1-2 strip boxes with grids. If you want to do a rim or hair light or anything tightly controlled, they'll be useful.

Also, I'm not sure there's an advantage to getting both 7" and 8.5" reflectors. Personally I'd just get 8.5" ones and grids for them.

Silver BD is more versatile than white. Silver plus diffusion sock will be soft and identical to a white BD plus sock. But beam spread is much wider with the sock. So white BD (without sock) gives you a soft, but tight beam. Neither is a bad choice, just different. You can soften the silver BD output with the sock, but there's not a way to make the white BD's output "punchy."

I was thinking that the plm without diffusion would give me similar results to a soft box with a grid and with diffusion would equate to one without a grid. Having not used either, am I buying too heavily into the plm hype? Perhaps trading one out for a sb would be a good move. And with the grids for the bd and reflector, it does make sense to get them at the same time.

This is my first move beyond a shoot-through umbrella, so I've never had the grid/no grid question before.

Thanks for the input!

Oh, good call about the different reflectors if I'm gridding them.

I love rim lighting, but hoped that a reflector could give me a hard enough light that I could get away without strip boxes. Maybe with a gobo? But then I'm into more stuff to control the light rather than just creating what I need in the first place, which is not a good trade off in a smaller studio space.

Thanks for the bd thoughts... I have some more reading to do on that...

I have the extreme silver PLM, and that is quite direct with a pretty clean cut-off, but the white PLMs won't be like that.

Welcome to our board and thanks for your interest in our products! However, this forum is intended for technical discussions rather than sales or technique advice. We do sincerely appreciate your interest, and our Customer Support team is very knowlegable and will gladly review and make recommendations based on your needs. You can contact them by phone 800-443-5542or via email at info@paulcbuff.com.

We thank you for your understanding!

Hi - I would love to get input from photographers who have paid for and are using the gear I'm considering... I have no doubt that your sales staff is very good, but they also have a very reasonable vested interest in making the sale, and my input on the phone will be limited to the view of a single person. I wouldn't make any decision on this scale without third-party input

Is there a better place for me to get input from your users? I don't want to be disrespectful, but want to get adequate input to make a wise decision.

Thanks,
Darryl

We thank you for your understanding, we tried an open forum before, and it too often degenerated into arguments over differing opinions. This forum is intended to be more empirical, though the line can blur. We do encourage you to participate with any technical concerns you may have.

I appreciate the concern over our vested interest in making sales, however we do not operate in that manner. We will not pressure you to buy something we do not truely believe will work to achieve your goals.

I also appreciate the desire for feedback from multiple users. Of the forums I have perused, I like visiting the Alien Bees group on Flickr. There are gobs of example photos, and a fairly active discussions. It also is welcome to einstein and WL lights. There are groups for each of the lights, but the Alien Bees forum is the most active.

You can believe TS on that one, they are great to work with. Give them a try.

James