First Studio Lighting!

Hey all I wanted to gather your thoughts on my purchase today. I have 3 400w strobes, power pack, all cords, two stands, 3 24" (I think) umbrellas silver lining, one 32" umbrella white lining, and diffusers for the heads. They are all Photomaster looks like they were made in 1992 old yes but was never used... it was a back up set.

I went to the local used stuff place... and ran in to this guy right before I was going to RENT one light for the weekend.... he was coming back to see how much they offered him on the set. I overheard 75.00 and quickly said SOLD! LOL bought new it was over 1k and works fabulously (from what a noob would know) and I got all of it for 180.00

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Looks like you really made out on that deal. Nice first try with strobes.

haha, nice. Is that you in the pictures? lol

Is that an Ovation !?

Nooo thats not me- thats Joe and my kiddos.

That is indeed an ovation good eye!

Nice kit and a good deal.
I was worried you had sold the shirt of Joe's back from the first portrait, but I see thats not true in #4.
If this is your first time with studio lighting then I think I'd better quit now, superb.

LOL!!! Nah I just made him get naked

Thanks so much! I unfortunately did not do so well on my first shoot with the lights....

Here is a gallery- I had the worst time with these. There was about a total of 20 or so people there- and though I printed a detailed shot list- organized is far from what it turned out to be. And the family didn't really WANT to take the pictures- so everyone was rushing around so much and complaining that I couldn't take the time to get my lights right.... shadows... HORRIBLE shadows. I didnt see them on the LCD... I only saw the BAD exposures on the LCD to reshoot.

I know I can edit them in photoshop (HEAVILY) to salvage (please know this proof set was not color corrected LOL- I dont plan to leave the color this way) but I am not that experienced to edit THAT much. This is about as good as I could get them all:

http://www.devyne.net/​schumaker.html

Wow you don't make life easy for yourself. That is a difficult bunch of people to photograph even without "lighting issues". There's some stuff there that will be worth the effort but its going to be tough. Good luck - you deserve it.

You arent lying there- what a nightmare! The location wasn't the best either. They were at least fun to work with LOL

Get yourself some large translucent panels to shoot the lights through. They aren't expensive and and a very handy tool for studio lights

From looking at the images on your website, lighting looks ok. Having said that, images sizes are too small to comment any more. One thing I didn't much like was that all of the images looked cropped too close. But again, if I was shooting my relatives, I would make sure no one was included in any part of the frame