Studio lighting for a real beginner

I want to experiment with studio lighting for portraits of friends and family. I ordered a mid price 'kit' which consisted of 3 x B Series master flash heads, 3 x sync cords for wired connection, various light modifiers, 1 universal radio trigger and a backdrop. I set one light up and the backdrop and fixed the sync cord from my camera (5D) to the back of the strobe. I tested the strobe which flashed correctly. My question is: what settings do I put the camera on to make the strobe fire? Let me just say that there were absolutely no instructions with this kit! I'm getting very frustrated because no settings I try seem to work consistently. I've tried manual, setting the shutter speed to 1/125 but I can't get a reading even with the aperture wide open. I pointed the camera at the softbox and locked the exposure, focussed on my subject and the strobe fired. When I did exactly the same thing 30 seconds later, the strobe did not fire. What am I doing wrong?! Someone help before I go mad!!

Lindsay

Are they attached wirelessly, or wired? What mode have you set your camera to, and what flash type do you have selected in it? Are you using hotshoe connection?

Welcome to the site.

I don't have any experince with studio lighting, so I'm going to put my .02 cents out here anyway.

You mentioned you had bought a radio trigger, did you happen to buy the receivers for the other strobes?
Maybe your strobes need a longer wait time to recharge?
Or maybe you have a loose conection some place?
Is your pop up flash on the camera up?

Best of luck to you.

Thanks for your input! I think I've resolved the problem: I used the radio trigger instead of the sync cord and hey presto, everything works just fine! Didn't anticipate that a sync cord straight out of the box wouldn't work correctly!

regards
Lindsay

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