a question of power?

[tell]

Firstly l would like to say thank you to all the people who devote their time to the running of this friendly and interesting photographic site. My experience in photography has been relegated to fixing up images, my main tool being photoshop. I do have an appreciation for good images and have decided to plunge into portrait photography. I am hoping someone might share their experience on portrait lighting. Am thinking of buying a package that consists of two lamp heads that contain flash and modeling bulbs as well as softbox, umbrellas, snoot, barndoors. At present my make shift studio is a tight fit around 5x5 metres but that could change at anytime. Finally my question... How much power should the heads be? I have a choice starting from 300watts to a 1000watts. From the little l know, lighting is very important and l dont wish to buy lamps and find them to weak. The lamps power can be regulated in strength . Would 2x500 watts heads be sufficient in a portrait studio. Am also looking at buying a nikon d700 with a fast portrait lens. I have included flash specs of the heads l am interested in.Any advice would be much appreciated. Hope my question is of interest to others..Thank you.. all the best from Tell, in Australia..

[jorgemonkey]

Welcome to the site!

I have 3 300 w/s strobes that I use for my product & some indoor portrait work. I've also got a couple camera flashes that I can use off camera for lighting as well.

The advice that I got (and should have listened to) would be to start off with one light, get comfortable with using it, then add lights/modifers when you need them. Otherwise you may up having lights just hanging around not being used.

My 300 ws strobes work great for me indoors, I don't think I've had to go full power on them yet. I'm starting to do more portraits outside, and with my style I like having the sun as a hairlight I find that 300ws and my softbox don't quite give me enough fill.

For lenses indoors I personally use my 50mm 1.8 & 70-200 VR lens. I have heard really good things about the 85 1.8, but I haven't used it before.

[tell]

jorgemonkey lm pleased you have shared with me your experience on getting started. Had a looksee at your photo site, very nice. So for you taking indoor portraits, 300watts a second strobes are perfectly adequate and you dont require anymore power. How often would you use all 3 strobes together?
I was thinking it might be nice to have 500 watt heads combined with softboxes or something to soften the light yet maintain brightness. But i was only looking at 2 heads. Now you have me thinking 3x300watts heads might make more sense..
Now lm giggling because your advice was to start off with one.. Now lm thinking instead of 2, i should start with 3..
Thank you again for your interest.
Tell.

[jorgemonkey]

The photos I took of my 6 month old were using 1 300ws light in a medium softbox, around 1/2 power or so, and I was getting F4-5.6 @ 100ISO. I had a Nikon sb-800 behind my kid and camera left as a back/hairlight. I actually find most of the time I'm only using 1-2 of my big lights at a time.