Hello, Me and my friend are going to buld a small studio in his house's cellar. It's a room of about 6m l., 4m w. and 2,3m h. We decided to buy monolights - there are some cheap ones available on the market. We decided to buy 3 units: for key light, fill light and for back/background light. The monolights we want to buy come as systems - there are diffusors, spots, softboxes, barndoors and filters dedicated to them. They also have modelling lights. They can be triggered by sync. cords or by built-in photocells. They also have adjustable flash output - either in 1 and 1/2 stops (cheaper units) or fluently (more expensive units). I decided to put all things together as following: _________________________ | ----------------------------A | | B | | | | O | | | | | | | | | | | | C ^ D | | | |________________________ |
A - background B - back- (on the ceiling) or background light (on the floor) C - fill light (on a high tripod) D - key light (on a high tripod) O - model(s) ^ - camera The camera will be my MZ-5n (MZ-7 and Z-50 as backup bodies), but I hope to add Kiev 88 (6x6) soon and 645 N II in the future. And now the questions: 1) What do you think about the studio layout I presented? Would you suggest some corrections? 2) As I'm going to trigger the monolights with my camera's built-in flash, is there any danger of affecting the light balance by the triggering light? Should I, perhaps, cover the built-in flash with a piece of paper or something? 3) Are flashmeters capable of meter the flash triggered from photocells i.e. wirelessly? If so then which ones and how they do it (I mean that as there are no wires connecting them to monolights, how would they know when to start and stop the metering)? 4) How should I interpret Wattseconds? I mean what does 100Ws mean? When I need to know how powerful a flash is, it is its GN that concerns me. However, all I hear and see is "Ws". Are there any formulas that calculate GN's from Ws? If not, then how can I estimate if a given number of Ws is powerful enough to provide me with the amount of light I need? As I plan to use basicly ISO 100 films at f/8, I need to get shutter speed of at least 1/30 - 1/60 for portraits (1/100 is the limit for the MZ-5n of course) and the monolights I'm going to buy are of 100Ws or 200Ws. I'd appreciate your input on the matter. Thanks in advance. Greetz Artur - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
