Lighting stands
These stands are quite lightweight and go to about 2 metres, they come with their own little carrying bag so are quite good for location work, obviously with the proviso that they will need weighting down or holding if there is any wind at all whilst using an umbrella.

Flashguns
In cheapo world we do not have the ability to use flashes in TTL mode when off camera, so we don't need expensive flashes, any flash that can work in manual mode and has the ability to set the power. There are a lot of secondhand flashes out there that will do this, I use old Sunpak ones, the 383 and the 433D do have the power switch and lots of others do too, but it is worth checking with the seller that this is the case if buying secondhand on eBay.

Or there is new alternative, from china called the YN460 this is a totally manual flash with power switching down to 1/64th power, it has a built in optical slave too. I do not have one of these so can't say how rugged they are, but they do everything that a strobist needs, for about £25 delivered!

The cheapest I have found is here.

Wireless triggers
I'm just going cheapest here, bottom line is you need a trigger and a receiver this can cost as little as £10.

This is for a single trigger/receiver set

If you want to use more than one flash you will either need another receiver of the same type as your trigger/receiver set as, as far as I know, they are not guaranteed to be compatible between different makes, or if you are using a YN460 flash you can set this as an optical slave, or use an optical slave trigger (available for about £5 on eBay) on a flash without a built in optical slave. This is fine if you are the only photographer in the area, but if other photographers are using flash, they will set off your optical slave flashes.

So in my opinion it is best to buy as many receivers as you think you are going to need. For instance here is a link to a 1 trigger/2 receiver set for about £16

You can get sets up to 1 trigger/4 receivers, but I would suggest getting 2 sets of the 1 trigger/2 receiver sets so you have a spare trigger.

Light modifiers
The cheapest is the umbrella and umbrella adapter (also known as a swivel adapter, and is used to connect an umbrella and a flash to a lighting stand and enables it to tilt).

Here's one and you may be able to find them cheaper on eBay.

The umbrella adapter is plastic and probably won't last forever, I actually prefer ones with a spigot with a 1/4" thread on it so the wireless receiver just screws onto it, these adapters are slightly more expensive.

This is probably slightly better quality

Here is a 60cm x 60cm softbox designed for portable flash, I haven't used one so can't guarantee that it would work with the wireless receivers attached.

Anyone interested in learning more should check out The Strobist Lighting 101.

Piers Marsh
(22 February 2010)

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