Family portraits

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on a lighting set-up for shooting family portraits? It's not something I have done before, but out of the blue I have been asked to do a paid shoot by some new friends here in Doha. I got paid for shooting pictures of hotel in Sri Lanka recently, so it's my second paid job in a month, which is rather nice! I will probably be doing this shoot in a few weeks.

My wife will be assisting me, and will probably do some or even all of the photography as she is quite good at people photography. The family are a couple and their 6 year old son.

My existing equipment is a Metz 50 AF-1, a Chinese flash of similar specs I can use as a slave, a home-made softbox (quite small), a bendable flash reflector and a square metre or so of foam material that I can use for diffusing flash. I don't have any stands or other equipment, save two tripods and a Gorillapod. I am wondering if I will have to get a flash cord to use the flash off-camera, and what other equipment I might need. I am going to Osaka tomorrow so can buy more equipment if needed, but I don't want to outlay too much as this could just be a one-off. I will make a stand or two if needed for the flashes. I am thinking about using natural light from a window with a gauze curtain too.

Any advice on what I need, set-up of the equipment, settings to use etc. would be much appreciated. I will try the set-up out before the shoot by enlisting some friends to pose for me. I also have no idea what to charge; a work colleague here who does this type of photography charges $US300 including prints, but some people who I work with who have used him have not been very happy with the results they got for that price.

Jon

Hi Jon, I'm not sure what sort of location you will have and whether or not there will be good quality natural light, but I find that natural light with appropriate reflectors makes for far better and more natural portrait shots than any flash setup can give.

If you could get natural light from two or more sources (windows, roof lights etc.) with maybe a little fill-in flash this would be my preference.

Regards
David

Thanks David, we have an exercise studio at home that gets good light, so we will try that out. There is also a large mirror on one wall which hopefully will increase the available light

Hi Jonathan,
my first thoughts were exactly like davidstorm's: What will be your location? I'm not sure if Metz 50 or its Chinese version is strong enough, for example, for shooting in strong sunlight and trying to 'overpower the sun'. Especially if shooting through anything, softbox or an umbrella. If in your studio you have enough light, you might be okay just with natural light. Position the family so that the window is not directly in front of them, turn them slightly sideways, so that the light falls onto their faces at an angle and gives them some texture. Use a large aperture, but be careful to position them at equal distances to the camera, so they're all in focus.
If you have anything large and white, you might us it as a surface to reflect the light coming from the window, to fill the shadowy sides of their faces.
Just my 2 cents, I'm not an expert by any measure.