suggestions for strobes

Ive been in photography for 10 years, and I prefer to do work on location outside, so I use natural light when ever I can. I have taken a lighting technique class and I use my external flashes all manually.

I have a studio, good for the bad weather days, and I've been using 4 or 5 flashes to do the lighting. This works great, but it also eats up batteries with each flash using 4AA's. I dont use the studio that much because of doing location work, but I'm starting to focus more on ballet and gymnastics portraits, so I would like to get some strobes.

But I don't really know a thing when it comes to strobes. The different brands, the terms, etc. I think you need a power pack that looks a bit like a car battery with lights, but I'm not sure.

** So I am hoping you all could suggest a couple strobes to get that wont break the bank.

I would like something that will let me get an exposure at iso 100 around F8, allow me to change the light output easily and have at least a few stops to choose from, *I dont want to have to move the light closer or further away to get the same affect* and allow me to take pictures relatively fast after each other. Thats one of the biggest drawbacks with my current flashes, I have to wait a couple seconds between shots for them to charge up.

Idealy, I would like to have 5 flashes, 2 for the background *still perplexes me how to get the 2 flashes in the back to shine evenly over the background with out the spots closer to the flash being brighter and the light facing away till they meet in the center*, a left and right light and a fill flash in the center.

But to start off, I think Ill just get the left and right strobes and play with the position of them and a bounce sheet.

* I'm also not looking to spend more than $100 on the two, I'm thinking this part isn't realistic. Perhaps there will be a black friday sale online?

I appreciate any help and suggestions that are offered.

I've had good luck with the Powerex 2500 mAh niMH ones, but they're a tiny bit fatter than the other batteries. I just peeled off the label.
http://www.thomasdistr​ibuting.com …98rm8a91donrsll​it8gi3gna7
http://www.thomasdistr​ibuting.com …-122_628.html?frontpage​=1

Are you looking at doing ballet and gymnastic photos outdoors away from power outlets? If so you can get portable power for studio lights which is basically a battery with a power inverter on it to convert the DC to AC. There are a few brands out there. Paul Buff has the Vegabond, but there are others.

Otherwise if you are shooting in their space then there liekly will be power outlets and you can just use those.

One of the things to consider is that if you are going to be shooting any action shots there is a big difference between the battery operated falshes and the power hungry studio strobes. The battery hot-shoe flashes tend to be very fast. The total light duration is quick so you can freeze action with them pretty easy. Now, studio strobes can vary a lot in duration and you can run into trouble freezing action if the duration is too long. A lot of these strobes are faster at lower power.

Make sure you check out the specs for these strobes and look for something called t.1 and t.5 times. The t.1 is important. It is basically how long it takes the strobe to go from full peak light burst to one tenth of that intensity. The faster the better for action.

There are some strobes out there that are designed around this spec to get very fast t.1 times. These tend to be more expensive, but if it's what you need then so be it.

Last week I shot all candids at a Karate studio that had their belt tests going on. They agreed to let me use lights. I put up two White Lightning x1600s in the corners on stands about 7 feet up and pointed them into the corners up at the ceiling. The only reason I had two is because the room was long so I needed coverage at both ends of the room. But because I knew how the light would bounce around the room I knew I could get away with so few lights.

You are not going to find much, if anything, worth getting for $100. Are these shoots you are going to do paying jobs? If so you should be able to make enough to get some good lights off a few shoots. My Karate galley from last week has been open since Sunday afternoon and it's already made me enough to buy a White Lightning x1600, a 13 foot air light lightstand, and a Pocket Wizard Pluss II. If you are just shooting for free then it makes it tough to justify getting gear... as much as you might love to shoot.

Here are my Karate galleries from last week. When it asks for an email to enter just put mine in (rsill1@cox.net) if you don't want to put your own in. There are 1,100 images across several sub-galleries

http://www.pixelcraftp​hoto.com/g/mountainsid​e_martial_arts

There are 1,100 images across several sub-galleries so if you just want to see one shot to check out the lighting to freeze action look at this one. It will represent stop action. This kid was kicked half way across the room. This shot was right at initial impact and his feet are already leaving the ground.

http://www.pixelcraftp​hoto.com …201-299/_mg_8519_42_9_2_3

Then there are shots that shows the lighting I was getting mostly off one light...

http://www.pixelcraftp​hoto.com …_1-100a/_mg_7878_42_9_2_1

If you dont mind me asking, how well did you do with the candid karate pictures?

I just did a gymnastics event, and sold about $3000 worth of merchandise to about 55 sets of kids parents. But those were 99% posed shots and did the sales at the gym after the fact whle the parents were waiting on the kids class to be over. That kept me busy for a while.

I did about 2555 candid pictures worth of pictures, but I have yet to sell a print of those, I do have them online but their small and heavily watermarked. And they cant order off of the website, perhaps thats the problem. They have to give me the file number and order through me. I do have one parent thats going to order some, just waiting on her to get back to me.

I hope to talk to a karate sensai or two today, depending if they are around when I go around and are not busy, and see if they are interested in posed shots.

I do my posed ballet/gymanstics stuff inside. I did the candids with a fast lens/high iso and got good shots.

Currently with my 4 off camera flash setup, I have them set to about 1/4 power so I can take pics faster, and use iso 400 normally and an aperture around F4. The 4x4=16AA batteries in the flashes lasted me the entire day, but at the end I had to slightly tweak the iso or aperture and wait slightly longer for the flashes to charge. So about 15 portraits with about 80 pics each.

So T.1 is fast, T.5 is slow? Thanks for the tip!