Quite a few friends and students have elevated their hobby interest in digital photography to a higher level. In simpler times, a 35mm SLR film camera, a few lenses, and an on-camera hot-shoe flash was what constituted a "pretty serious enthusiast."
Nowadays, I have the occasional student with full sensor pro-level DSLRs! These are NOT NECESSARILY practicing pros either! Some also have pretty intense studio setups, with Profoto or Einstein strobes. Students with multiple SB 800s are also not uncommon.
(I'm still the kind of guy who uses some home-brew lighting —see the video link below on using Hardware LEDs… but I do use some inexpensive mono-lights/cheap soft-boxes as well).
It is great if you can afford it, but without the knowledge of how to properly utilize them (or experience with the nuances that come with years of using the equipment), the impact won't be as great as it could be.
One of the first things I did was look at shots that had lighting diagrams included. This lets you dissect/reverse-engineer a shots appearance. I've included a few links below to sights and blogs that can be really good resources.
Strobox will allow you to search amongst a collection of photos, diagrams, write-ups, and videos for a desired lighting situation. It is also run from donations.
Portrait Lighting.Net is a site that contains the shot and the lighting diagram that provides the desired result. The interface shows you options for the number of studio lights you want to use (1 to 4, natural), which contain links to the various results.
Using a blog entry format, this site simply posts a shot with a brief lighting diagram beneath it. Any anecdotal or additional notes are attached to it.
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