Another lighting question! Sunpak 150?

[chickymcnuffin]

Okay, so I'm STILL trying to decide what to get for lighting. I'm going to be doing more on location (going to people's houses and setting up a tiny studio there - for newborn/holiday/family portraits), so I want something pretty portable, but also reliable, and inexpensive. I found the Sunpak 150's and I was wondering how well those would work for portraits? Or would that not be enough lighting? Here's the link:
http://www.adorama.com/SUMP150K.html?searchinfo=sunpak%20light%20kit&item_no=9

I could always go up one, but I'm trying to save as much money as possible... Unfortunately the military doesn't pay much, haha!

Sorry for always asking questions...

[chickymcnuffin]

Also, does Sunpak offer any on camera flash units? If so, what's a good one?

[Rudeofus]

While 160 bucks sounds nice for off camera flash, I hope you are aware that you'll operate this flash in full manual mode, i.e. no TTL or auto settings. As you are moving this strobe from location to location, you'll have to find out the proper power output every time until you gain enough experience to guestimate the correct settings. Not sure whether babies or newborns keep their happy face throughout that process ...

At the same time there's nothing eTTL compatible you can get for US$160 AFAIK. There are Sunpaks which are capable to automatically regulating their flash output, but this doesn't work if you shoot through a light modifier (umbrella, softbox, ...)

[chickymcnuffin]

So what do you recommend instead?

[Rudeofus]

I don't know how good you are with your camera, whether your want to turn this into a serious hobby or not and how much time and money you want to dedicate to photography.

If you are willing to practise at home a lot, so you get the experience with shooting in full manual, then you can save a lot of money with the Sunpak. If you can risk/afford fiddling with your camera on location for 20 minutes, if you may take every shot 20 times before it's correctly exposed (at least initially), the Sunpak is a cheap way to enter the field.

I personally decided to go with ST-E2 and Metz 58 (baby due by the end of the year), which costs a whole lot more but hopefully limits the number of initial failed shots to a bare minimum.

One more thing you may want to consider: The Sunpak does not illumiate the subject before it fires, so you may have difficulties with auto focus. No show stopper, but you should be aware before you delve into this.

If you don't want to spend much time and effort on this and just want to get some semidecent shots with minimum effort, you could consider a continuous light unit from this list (http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?op=itemlist&cat1=Flash/Lighting&cat2=Continuous%20Output%20Lighting&cat3=Tungsten%20Units&sf=Price). Note, that even a 500W light does not nearly produce as much illumination as a small flash, but if you bump up ISO to 400 or 800, you can get reasonable exposure times for apertures around 2.8. Since you get 500W lights below US$ 80, you can get two of them for the price of the Sunpak and can create more elaborate lighting setups. And since it's continuous light, you can auto focus easily plus you see through your view finder what you get. With this continuous light you can even record some video clips...

[roman_t]

i've got platinum 300 bought at bh. still no regrets. but after metz unlocked center pin via firmware on their 58 i take it with stand and umbrella quite often and sunpak pz5000 as a slave to metz.

[Rudeofus]

but after metz unlocked center pin via firmware on their 58 i take it with stand and umbrella quite often and sunpak pz5000 as a slave to metz.

I've read nasty stories about the new firmware not working properly. Could you share some info ?