Shopping for Lighting and IR

[Trevor Cunningham <trevor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey gang,

This summer, I'll be shopping for some new gear. I'm interested in 
materials toward the objective of a home studio for portraiture and 
table-top still life. There's tons of websites dedicated to the subject, 
almost to the point of them being overwhelming. I'm not sure if I should 
go with monolights, speedlights, etc. From what I've seen, I like the 
portability and space-saving capacity of multiple speedlights/slaves, 
but I have no idea as to the power I would need. Any thoughts? What do 
you have or wish you had in your studio? If you had to start over, what 
you get first?

IR: I would also like to start doing more macro IR work indoors. I 
understand that most incandescent sources serve well for IR, but how 
does this translate into speed/mono lights? Also, I'd like to achieve a 
black background and wonder what color/type of material would reflect 
the least amount of IR radiation. A black velvet? I remember Andy 
sharing something along these lines a few years back.

Cheers...Trevor