Thanks for the replies, guys! Sounds good and I'm glad it's doable easily.
David Ziser has been raving about Pocket Wizards on his blog for ages as well, it sounds like a solid product, although quite pricey.
I'm a big fan of the EX-580 II in manual mode for its portability, and am considering investing in one or two more, along with some umbrellas and reflectors. I don't want to lug around a power pack, and my style of shooting doesn't require lightning fast recycle times anyway.
One thing I´d suggest is that you don´t take the max. synch speeds of 1/500th too literally. Some shutters, if very new, seemed reliable at high speed, but in studio work it was pointless going beyond 125th or perhaps 250th of a sec. Unless, of course, your ambient light was too high and defeated your modelling lamps too. Older studio units used to have apparent high power by virtue of the flash lasting longer; faster flashes required more power to achieve the same exposure. Slow flashes might sometimes be too slow to stop model motions (jumps) so in cases like that they aren´t much use - unless some added blur helps the mood... If there is a choice, use the X-synch connection which is for electronic; the other was for bulbs, which could give a huge blast of light, but triggered the bulb at a different time during the exposure - could last the whole exposure, in fact, as against electronic flash which being so much shorter in duration, should only synch. (in general) when the shutter is fully open or you´ll get uneven exposure across the frame if using a focal plane shutter.
Hope this helps rather than confuses, but as I haven´t heard of anybody making bulbs anymore, perhaps you are safe from burned fingers, the smell of faulty bulbs etc. Some things have improved in some directions.
Rob C
EDIT: Having just had a salad and the time to think about this flash thing, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have been mistaken about the non-X contact: Fp, wasn´t it? As I have not even seen a PF60 or PF90 since 1965, my memory might be miles out of tune; if anybody else here has a more recent or better-conditioned memory, maybe they might care to confirm or deny? I´m sure X worked as long as the speed was slow enough to meet the burn time of the bulb...
