More Speedlights or Studio

With my soon to be arriving Q-box24, I have found myself at a cross roads in decision making time. Do I purchase additional speedlights, or save up for more quality studio lighting as that will be my end goal.
For the next year, my primary focus will be outdoor portraits working with friends and family to learn how to paint with light through my speedlight; I can see the advantage of acquiring a few more speedlights and some cheap umbrellas to augment this.

With the end goal in mind of my slow conversion of the third stall in my garage into a studio I also see the need to have multifunctional lighting ie Alien Bees type with portable voltage converters.

Any advice would be appreciated

I have both a speedlite kit and a set of alien bees and honestly the speedlite kit doesnt see much use. The ability to use larger and more varied light modifiers, combined with more power make the AB's (or other similar brands) a much better option for most shoots. Given that a 430exII is about the same price as an AB800 its not like you can argue that staying with speedlites is a bargain proposition going forward.

If your goal is studio flashes, go for studio flashes. The more time you give to get to know them, use them and abuse them, the better the results will be.

Yes, I have to agree - studio strobes are really very cost effective, I find. Powerful and a good quality light. My first studio strobes were cheap ebay strobes - good to learn with but in hindsight I think would have been better off with one good quality name brand mono light strobe rather than the three crappy ebay ones I bought. I had to bail out of them and then start building a system starting with one quality light......

Thanks for the advice, I was leaning toward the more powerful lighting; guess I needed that extra push to help with the decision.

Rocky Rhode wrote in post #13042164
Thanks for the advice, I was leaning toward the more powerful lighting; guess I needed that extra push to help with the decision.

Your stated objective is "painting with light" outdoors for portraits.
Not sure what you mean since "painting" has a couple of different implications when applied to lighting and photography.

Speedlites outside raise serious power concerns.
Monolights outside have a different kind of power concern related to max sync speed and need to stop down the lens to get proper exposure.

dmward wrote in post #13042253
Your stated objective is "painting with light" outdoors for portraits.
Not sure what you mean since "painting" has a couple of different implications when applied to lighting and photography.

Acknowledged: I could have stated “learning to use the light emitted by the portable flash unit to imprint additional frequencies onto the sensor of my camera to enhance the subjective view point of the observer”; painting with light sounded cooler to me.

"painting with light" sounds way cooler!

“Learning to use the light emitted by the portable flash unit to imprint additional frequencies onto the sensor of my camera to enhance the subjective view point of the observer”... sounds like the title of a Master's Thesis from an Ivy League Unversity...

However, painting with light evokes the idea of either using multiple firings from a single flash to illuminate a subject or by moving a continuous light to illuminate the subject and/or using a comtinuous light moving around to make a pattern of light. An example is to photograph a flashlight hanging from a string in a dark room with the shutter open...

Regarding the difference between Speedlights (Which are, by definition, Canon Hotshoe Electronic Flashes, not Metz, Yongnuo, Sunpak or any other brand of electronic flash) and true studio strobes...

Just about the only advantages of the Speedlights are portability and the ability to use HSS in shooting action. Battery power is sometimes considered another advantage but, we are now seeing some very capable studio strobes which have battery capability.

Studio strobes are better in every other way. Especially due to their major advantage which (IMO) is their modeling light capability...

Other advantages are power, ability to interface with stands and light modifiers without jury-rigged modifications, steady recycle times, optical slaves, and quite often price. You can obtain some very capable studio strobes for less than the price of a 580EXii.