Liz,
I have Alien Bees 400s, 2 of them, and I set them up approximately 45 degrees off of the center line. I bounce them off of 36-inch silver umbrellas and trigger them with a Morris wireless transmitter and 2 receivers. That gives me a working setup of F8 at 1/200 on the 30D at ISO 160.

I use the same setup for Group shots at All Breed Shows and for all the shots at Specialties. Being able to control the light and having a constant, predictable light source means my post-processing is always identical in terms of brightness, contrast and sharpening. That is a big time-saver when you're editing over 1500 images from a weekend shoot.

The nice thing about the studio setup is that I can dial down either of the two Bees to create a primary light source and a secondary fill source. Sometimes you want to create some shadow detail especially with people portraits and faces.

I've had the Bees for over 5 years and have never had to replace anything but the modeling light. They are light, very durable, inexpensive and totally reliable. I highly recommend them.

As for the chromakey, Linda (my wife) has a Clio in video production from her days in the TV studio so we've been doing it on the video side for a long time. Applying it to the digital still side should be fairly easy provided that the software does the job it's supposed to do especially with edge blending and virtual lighting sources (to match the new background). Whether or not it does, we'll find out over the next week or so.

Reports to come,

Jim