The first thing to remember when entering the studio is to be aware of your surroundings as not only are you going to be in the presence of a whole host of expensive and fragile equipment, you also have to observe health and safety issues so watch out for trailing leads, remember that studio lights get very hot and above all else that electricity can kill. With these things in mind, when you are setting up your lights the first thing to do is to inspect all power leads for any signs of damage and as obvious as this may sound it is can often be over looked as people are inclined to presume that who ever used it last would have checked it so it must be ok. Don't presume anything....check each lead by feeding it through your hands checking for plug damage, insulation damage and whilst you're at it, make sure there are no knots in the lead and then you can proceed to setting up your lights, which you should also inspect, and make sure you try and route your cables in such a fashion that you aren't going to be tripping over them as you move around between shots.
Now that we've got the scary stuff out of the way I want to talk about the range of equipment that's commonly used in the studio starting with the lights....
Compact Flash Heads/Monoblocks
These units have all the electronics built into the head itself and are often favoured by both amateurs and professionals alike as the head contains a a lamp holder for the modelling lamp, the flash tube, all the circuitry and a fan to keep it cool.
Power Packs
These units are generally used when they high speed over a long period of time is going to be required, such as fashion photography, as they can generate a huge amount of power (up to 6000w/s) . The parts that generate the most heat are housed in the head and the electronics are contained in the pack itself which is fan cooled. Care should be taken when setting up lights to the power pack especially if it has different rated output sockets which are usually colour coded.
Lighting Choices
Hot lights: Also known as tungsten lights, they are basically ordinary quartz halogen lights around 500-800w they are more of a continuous lighting source for such things as product photography and not really suitable for portraits as they appear brighter than they are so it may be necessary to adjust the ISO, they produced heat so can make the sitting uncomfortable as can the glare in the sitters eyes, plus they can be warm in colour so white balance is a thing to be considered. Simply called hot lights because they get hot .Cool lights: As with hot lights they produce little in the way of power but being fluorescent they run cool so a sitter is made more comfortable. As they are considered to imitate daylight, they work better with flash and if there is natural light in the room from an external source.
Flash: Either hot shoe or studio and with far more power than either the hot or cool lights and without the limitations of either.
Modifiers
Umbrellas: Mounted so that the strobe faces away from the subject and so bounces the light back of the reflective surface of the umbrella to produce a diffused, soft light. Choices of lining mean silver is more efficient and can concentrate a more direct light than white which has a wider spread of reflected light and gold which produces a warm tone.
Soft boxes: Usually square or rectangular and in a variety of sizes, they are attached to the front of the strobe facing the model and the light bounced of the inner reflective surface and diffused through translucent front to produce a soft light. More controlable than umbrellas as the light is contained, where as when using umbrellas the light can spill outside the boundaries or the subject matter and cause problems if bouncing of other reflective surfaces.
Soft light/beauty dish: These create a hard light with soft edges but without any hot spots yet are considered to have a sweet spot where they work best. It's recommended to keep them within 2 feet of the subject to get the full effect and because of this they are mostly used for portraits. I've also included a short video here on the beauty dish to give you (and me) some idea of what results to expect.
Snoots: Being of conical shape, they are used to produce a narrow, concentrated, harsh light and for this reason are often used as a spot light or to light a background as well as a hair or rim light when lighting the model from behind.
Barn doors: Usually consisting of four flaps that allow a little more directional control of the strobe by means of adjusting the flaps to control the spill of light but not as directional as the snoot.
Honeycomb: This is quite simply a grill that fits on the front of the light source, be it a dish or a snoot, and it works by directing the light as a concentrated beam to produce a hard circle of light with soft edges they can also be used as back light or hair light as the spread of light is restricted so it can prevent any flaring.
Deep reflector: These are used to produce a large patch of light and can be considered quite contrasty especially those with an internal silver reflective surface.
Used in conjunction with the above, the studio should also have a range of gels that can placed over light sources to change background colours and create moods, bounce reflectors that are used to fill in shadows such as under chins and large polyboards used as either large reflectors or just simply as screens to shield from unwanted light spills.
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