Advice about lighting...

Right now my lighting consists of whatever comes in my window (free is for me!) and a 580ex ii that I just purchased (being delivered Tuesday!). I mainly do portraits in my home. Would it benefit my pictures more to either use it on my camera as a bounce or to purchase a lightstand and softbox and use it like that...or any other advice? I would love to afford a "fancy" light setup eventually but this is the extent of my available options I think. Please explain. Thank you in advance for any replies!

On camera bounce flash can produce soft but flat lightening, but if you learn how to use it, how to direct the flash to produce great lighting, you can produce amazing results. The master of on camera bounce flash is Neil van Niekerk. He has a wealth of information on his web site about flash photograph:

http://neilvn.com …/1-natural-looking-flash/

He has written several books too, but much of the information is on his web site.

Are you ever going to shoot on location to where you need battery power or portability is a huge option?

You can build kits on a budget. You can find new manual flashes for about $100 that would do almost everything that 580EX II would do off camera with a radio trigger stuck to it. If you don't want to have to keep track of batteries, you can look at something like Adorama flashpoints. You can get a 150w/s monolight for $100ish. For the price of 3 of those and triggers, you'll probably be at less that the cost of a 580EX II.

Don't get me wrong, I own TTL enabled hotshoe flashes and I think it's good for most photographers to have at least one in their kit, but if you're wanting to do off camera lighting and don't need the TTL feature, then it's not worth spending the money on the flashes when you can get lights that do everything you need for a fraction of the price.

Oops. OCF - Off Camera Flash. A set of triggers will benefit you more. There's some times that all I have with me is a hot shoe flash and I don't want a direct harsh light so I toss the triggers on it and set it up in a corner of the room to bounce of the celing and provide a nice soft light.