Still life lighting

[Onerider]

After reading many, many posts, I have settled on two of these because of the many recommendations of it being a good beginners setup.

Flashpoint II 320 Monolight Kit, 150 Watt Second, One Monolight Kit with 9.5' black Light Stand and 24x24" Softbox

My question is, will this be overkill for still life? I have no plans to make portraits or to use it outside.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Designer]

150ws is low for portraits, but it should be fine for most still-life setups. Presumably you can adjust the power level down if you need to.

 

[Helen B]

Do you have a tripod? Have you considered continuous light as you are doing still life exclusively? I do lots of still life, and most of the time the only illumination comes from four 100 W household incandescent lamps. I may switch to high CRI compact fluorescents soon, like the 26 W Kino-Flo ones, now that they are getting better.

 

[tirediron]

It depends on the size of your still life subjects, but in general, I would say 'yes', that would be fine.

 

[Onerider]

Do you have a tripod? Have you considered continuous light as you are doing still life exclusively? I do lots of still life, and most of the time the only illumination comes from four 100 W household incandescent lamps. I may switch to high CRI compact fluorescents soon, like the 26 W Kino-Flo ones, now that they are getting better.

This is how I have been doing it. At some point in my reading I got the idea flash was the better way to go. Have I misunderstood that? I do have a tripod and use it all the time for this.

 

[tirediron]

Flash is a better way to go because it's more easily and accurately controlled, but for still life, especially small subjects, continuous lighting will work just fine.

 

[Onerider]

Ok. I will rethink all this and save some money. Thanks for all the input.

 

[Mike_E]

Monolights are fine. Just replace the 150 watt modeling lights with 250 watts and use these to light your subjects. You can also use all of the modifiers available this way.

You can even dim the modeling lights by varying the strobe output- and so long as you don't use a flash or have them hooked up to your camera the strobes wont fire.

I would get monolights with fans though.