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On the strength of the work I did in this thread (
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/post-your-photos/27583-shot-flute-recital-today.html), I have been asked to shoot the senior class Graduation Cruise. The cruise will be held on a 120ft yacht which will be cruising in and around the NYC waterways, New York Harbor, and the Statue of Liberty for about 4 hours.
I'm a little nervous about how to go about setting up the lighting.
The plan is to set up a stationary location on the ship where I'll be able to do couples/family shots for about 1 to 1.5 hours and spend the rest of the time shooting candids. My first thought was to use a shoe mounted flash for the stationary shots, but I wasn't sure whether that would be the most effective method of shooting. I don't have a P-TTL compatible flash, meaning I would be shooting in manual mode. That probably wouldn't be a problem since the scenery/light wouldn't be changing. I should be ableto just do a few test shots and then fire away with the same settings. Being that this is a paying gig, I didn't want to be caught with not enough light, so I decided to explore some other options.
My other options are:
(1) Pick up a continuous lighting kit and shoot without flash at all.
or
(2) Get some Cactus V2s triggers from eBay and use them instead. I have 2 Vivitar 3500 flashes that I could set up.
What I ended up doing was both! I ordered the V2s + an additional receiver from eBay seller Gadget Infinity along with this setup from B&H:
Impact | Digital Flash Umbrella Mount Kit | DFUMK | B&H Photo
I also ordered this studio lighting kit from eBay:
800 w Lighting Kit Muslin Background Support System T15 - eBay (item 320257456430 end time Jun-04-08 21:32:58 PDT)
I figure I'll have a use for both of these setups and some point. The Cactus/B&H kit will be portable and can be used almost anywhere. I've always wanted to mess around with some Strobist type stuff and this will ggive me an opportunity to do so. The studio setup should be okay for light portrait work for friends, family, etc. I have no idea of the quality of this setup. Given the price, I don't expect it to be rock solid (fingers crossed on thsi one). I hope it'll suffice until I can get something better.
I know I'm going to have to spring for some better flashes with P-TTL capability at some point, but right now I'm trying to cover all the bases with a fairly small operating budget.
Any opinions on what I've done?
Good move?
Bad move?
Thoughts?