A tutorial marathon, eh? Sounds like fun…I remember those days of being SO excited about photography and lighting and trying to cram POUNDS of information into my brain pan.

When I use the term ‘lights’ I ALWAYS mean strobes. I have had very little experience with old school ‘hot’ lights, meaning lights that don’t ‘fire’ and are instead always on and produce a constant and fixed amount of light.

That said, I am aware the ‘hot’ or constant light technology has improved a bit over the old EXTREMELY hot bulbs they used to use. Back in the day, the only photographers who used hot lights shot exclusively in Black & White, where color temperature didn’t much matter.

However, it is still my understanding that the other major drawback of ‘hot’ lights still persists….not enough light output. Generally speaking, strobes ‘fire’ in a short burst of phenomenally high light output. When you combine two, three or four really good strobe heads, you can light practically anything, and shoot at very fast shutter speeds and small apertures. Fast shutter speeds are handy for fast moving subjects (like busy children) and small apertures are good for keeping every one in a larger group in focus.

That said, some of the newer DSLRs have the capacity to shoot at very high ISOs with remarkably little noise. This could possibly mean you can use them just as effectively to shoot at either fast shutter speeds or with smaller apertures.

So, the only way to really answer you own question is to either do a lighting test with a really good light meter OR start shooting away and look at the results and decide if you’re happy with the level of light you’re getting.

I suspect that between the two strobes you do have AND the Spiderlight (especially if you’re shooting it bounced out of a silver lined softbox) you have plenty of light to shoot really remarkable portraits.

Also, I might be tempted to use JUST the Spiderlight offset strongly to one side for quietly photographing sleeping babies……ssssshhhhhh.

Hope that answered your questions and provided some insight!

Thank you so much for the gracious comment. That book….oh yeah, an idea in the making. Glad your interested.