I got tired of lugging the big Norman strobe set from work so I searched around for a CHEAP set for my home studio (25'xx35'), I ended up with a 2 strobe set from Britek and after almost a year of fairly heavy use I feel that it was the best $250 I ever spent
The good
Plenty of power for 1 or 2 people portrait work or still life
Modeling lights! (A must have!)
Wont melt people in front of them (Continuos lighting get very hot)
Power can be set to 1/2 or full
fit many types of umbrellas and softboxes (the cheap no name brands)
plug into a standard wall outlet (power packs cost $$$$$)
will recycle under 2 seconds
have slave sensors (that work) on them so you will not have to run wires all over
replacement bulbs/tubs are fairly cheap (Flash and modeling)
color balanced so "regular" daylight films can be used (Big plus!)
wont damage newer electonic cameras since they have a very low voltage through the PC term. If you do decide on strobes/flash please look into this, One of the older $5000 set ups at my work could FRY new DSLR's and SLR's (It cocked a Canon 10D)
The bad
They are made of SUPER light weight plastic (I would not want to travel with them)
you must plug them into a wall outlet so on location shots are out anyway
Low power, so group shots or very large items would be hard to light without switching to 400 or 800 speed film
light weight stands, they could get knocked over (I taped them down at the legs when photographing kids)
the light from silver 32" umbrellas is a little harsh for portraits so you may end up wanting a softbox or a larger white umbrella (cheap softbox=$80-100)
you will need a flash meter $75-and up (Some are WAY UP)
I would not buy there "higher end" strobes, since the price gets close to what a more solidly built set would go for used (Norman, Aleinbees....)
the link below is where I bought them (he is now also on Ebay), the price seems fair but I only bought from him 2 times so I would not vouch for him even though all went well, maybe you can find Britek at your local store
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... gory=15221
Good luck, and if you have any specific questions feel free to Email me
Ray