Looking for strobes for Senior Pics

[Big Mike]

Lets remove brand then from the equation. What will I need to look for in a kit, or can you just give me some sample kits from Profoto, Alienbee, and others?

You should have started with this

It's hard to say what you will need because you specified 'mobile senior photography'...that could mean anything. Can you be more specific as to what you want?
If you really want to be mobile, have you considered going with flash units rather than studio strobes?

A simple 'portrait studio' set up would be 4 lights. A main (key) light, a fill light, a background light and a hair/kicker light. Umbrellas or softboxes as you prefer, light stands etc. Snoots, grids and/or barn doors for a couple of the lights.

 

[CxThree]

Id suggest you look into using off camera strobe speedlites with a combination of shoot through/bounce umbrellas and possibly a westcott apollo 28x28 softbox. This is a VERY portable solution and way cheaper.

Check out strobist.com and read their lighting 101 section. If you already have speedlites, great. If not, you could get 2 vivitars for under $200, a couple of umbrellas and stands for $100-$125 and the softbox I mentioned off of beach camera via ebay for $120.

Mpex.com has a strobist section with their lumapro stuff in kits. One of those would serve you very well as long as you took the time to get use to manual mode speedlite flash usage.

The results can be awesome. For what you are doing, I believe this would be plenty of lighting.

 

[SpeedTrap]

How did you take care of your service issues? Did PCB send you new units or did you have to mail them in each time and wait for repairs and were you without your lights for days or weeks? I haven't had to use their service yet, nor have my friends who own them so I would like to know what to expect when my lights start falling apart.

Thanks.

I had to send them to the local service depot in Canada. This cost me $15 each way for shipping plus usually $100-150 in parts. Now I can understand that things happen, but almost all damage done to my lights would have been prevented with metal housings. As well when I had to send one out it took several weeks to get them back. Now as a working photographer 3 weeks is too long to be without some of your lights.

Now the brand I am using now (Lighrein) has a local distributor here in the city and if one break can take it to them and they will give me a replacement to use while mine is being repaired. As well they come with a 3 Year Warranty.

I am not saying alien bees are not capable, I am just saying that I would have saved some money if I had evaluated my needs better up front and invested in the right equipment the first time.