lighting advice please!

[KPhotography]

I have a nikon D5000 18-55mm and 55-200mm lens with a sb-600 speedlight I was looking into adding lights. What is better the softbox or umbrellas, and do all lights work wireless with this camer and would I still shoot with the speedlight on my camera. I am new into the studio stuff, usually do outdoor stuff, but I love the look of the all white and all black backrounds and am having trouble getting that look. I have a backdrop stand with a white and a black muslin drop right now.... Thanks so much for any help and advice!

I have also been shooting in auto setting should I choose a different setting to get the traditional all black or all white backround you see!

 

[Village Idiot]

I have a nikon D5000 18-55mm and 55-200mm lens with a sb-600 speedlight I was looking into adding lights. What is better the softbox or umbrellas, and do all lights work wireless with this camer and would I still shoot with the speedlight on my camera. I am new into the studio stuff, usually do outdoor stuff, but I love the look of the all white and all black backrounds and am having trouble getting that look. I have a backdrop stand with a white and a black muslin drop right now.... Thanks so much for any help and advice!

I have also been shooting in auto setting should I choose a different setting to get the traditional all black or all white backround you see!

Holy Christ dude! Take a breath

White seamless tutorial:
zarias.com :: The blog of editorial photographer Zack Arias » White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space

Lighting 101:
Strobist: Lighting 101

The lighting 101 will show you what equipment you need. Only first party Nikon speedlights and certain 3rd party speedlights will work with Nikon's wireless TTL ability. Other ways to fire flashes are with sync cords, optical slaves or radio triggers. There's different brands and options for each and some are better than other, especially depending on the lights you end up going with.

Softboxes are generally more expensive than umbrellas, but control the direction of the light better. All modifiers have different characteristics from barn doors, to snoots, to beauty dishes. Google articles on them, how they affect the light, and examples of what they look like.

 

[KmH]

I have a nikon D5000 18-55mm and 55-200mm lens with a sb-600 speedlight I was looking into adding lights.

What is better the softbox or umbrellas

It depends. Better in what way? Softboxes generally give better control of the light, but cost more, are more difficult to transport, and not as easy to set up.

and do all lights work wireless with this camer

Lights only work wirelessly (and in manual mode) with a D5000 if they can be optically triggered by the pop-up flash, because the D5000 doesn't have CLS Commander mode.

and would I still shoot with the speedlight on my camera.

No, because the pop-up won't work when there is a flash (strobe) mounted on the hot shoe. You can buy Nikon products that would allow wireless light control, like the SB-700, SB-800 (only available used), SB-900, or an SU-800 (a light controller that doesn't flash). The other option is to use radio triggers, but for using radio triggers for automatic light control, they get expensive.

I have also been shooting in auto setting should I choose a different setting to get the traditional all black or all white backround you see!

Correct. You would want to use manual mode so you can use the shutter speed to control the exposure of the background, and the lens aperture to control the strobed light.

 

[RockstarPhotography]

wow.....well, I would start off with an umbrella. get a convertible one that can be bounce, or shoot through. You have more lighting options with the umbrella then the softbox, although the softbox is a much nicer light imo.

to get the background to fall to black you will have to shoot manual. in a nutshell, you shoot at low iso and an aperature/shutter combo that will drop the background to black and use your speedlights to bring the subject to the correct exposure. There is more to it then that, i would suggetst some of the links given to you.

good luck