For a home studio, I'd HIGHLY recommend the Alien Bee's 400 series. More than enough light to use, well built, slaved and a ton of accessories that will allow your arsenal to grow. I have also found mine to be very consistent too. Hope this helps. Mark Lent -----Original Message----- From: owner-photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Trevor Cunningham Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 7:23 AM To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students Subject: Shopping for Lighting and IR 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
