Good artificial lighting

[70bird]

A friend of mine is getting into photography as a hobby (mostly portrait type) and is looking for good artificial lighting. Any suggestions as to lighting would be greatly appreciated. She's using a canon rebel eos.
Thanks in advance.

 

[chito beach]

A friend of mine is getting into photography as a hobby (mostly portrait type) and is looking for good artificial lighting. Any suggestions as to lighting would be greatly appreciated. She's using a canon rebel eos.
Thanks in advance.

a great place to start would be a couple of camera flashes to use as strobes and shoot through umbrellas kits.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

Adorama.com... Flashpoint Lighting Kit. This is a nice entry level kit. Very good reviews and rather inexpensive.

You could also look at the Alien Bees offerings...

I personally recently bough the Bowens Gemini 400/400 kit. Its a bit more money, but being Canadian, it was much less hassle for me as far as shipping and duty and all that good stuff...

There are others... But these are good options to start.

 

[Village Idiot]

A friend of mine is getting into photography as a hobby (mostly portrait type) and is looking for good artificial lighting. Any suggestions as to lighting would be greatly appreciated. She's using a canon rebel eos.
Thanks in advance.

Learning about lighting is the place to start. Then figuring out what type of photography the majority of your lighting is going to be the second thing to think about. Next you're going to want to figure out where you're going to be shooting. Then there's the budget to decide on what you want and what you can or can't afford.

Strobist: Lighting 101

If you jump right in and purchase three monolights (basically a type of light that requires wall power and is generally used in a studio), but find out you need portability and portable power, you're going to wish you would have looked at small off camera speedlights. On the other hand, if you purchase off camera speedlights and find out that you need power and need to kill the sun, you're going to have to purchase bigger lights.

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

If you jump right in and purchase three monolights (basically a type of light that requires wall power and is generally used in a studio), but find out you need portability and portable power, you're going to wish you would have looked at small off camera speedlights. On the other hand, if you purchase off camera speedlights and find out that you need power and need to kill the sun, you're going to have to purchase bigger lights.

I know you can buy portable-rechargeable power packs for the Bowens Gemini monolightights and the Flashpoint monolights from Adorama... Alien Bees must offer a similar thing...

Granted, its not as portable as a speedlight with a hotshoe adapter... But they do offer this option.

 

[Village Idiot]

If you jump right in and purchase three monolights (basically a type of light that requires wall power and is generally used in a studio), but find out you need portability and portable power, you're going to wish you would have looked at small off camera speedlights. On the other hand, if you purchase off camera speedlights and find out that you need power and need to kill the sun, you're going to have to purchase bigger lights.

I know you can buy portable-rechargeable power packs for the Bowens Gemini monolightights and the Flashpoint monolights from Adorama... Alien Bees must offer a similar thing...

Granted, its not as portable as a speedlight with a hotshoe adapter... But they do offer this option.

There are several different options, but at about $300-$400 a pack and some of them weighing a lot, that means you need a larger case for larger lights, larger stands, and larger modifiers. My main camera bag always has my 580EX II in it and my smaller bag has 2 430EX II's with PW PII's for each along with gels and modifiers. It's about 12"x5"x6". There's even a set of barndoors for one of the flashes. It weighs nothing at all as well.

That and a bag that fits my tripod, three small compact light stands, and some umbrellas and I can hike several miles without too much discomfort. Try taking three alien bees, stands, modifiers, triggers, and a battery pack as far. You're going to have a ton more weight.

Or when shooting in abandonments. There's another good example. Or when shooting when you just don't feel like carrying all the weight.

I can take my 5 heads, two packs, battery, and all the other stuff I need, but if I don't have to carry around 100+ lbs of equipment, then I'm all for it.