What struck me is that you have experience with several vendors and like one over the others but don’t say WHY other than you like it better. Perhaps try to be more descriptive such as brighter colors, etc. you cant post samples but at least be descriptive.

It’s like saying one car is better than the other without a narrative.

This is no small challenge. I dont know how much time you have to prepare, but I strongly suggest you consider off camera flash (OCF) methods such as having a transmitter on camera and a flash in a diffuser. And to practice before heading out. There is a FaceBook group called, "Speedlight and Strobe Light Fundamentals" run by Tim Payne that is dedicated to the OCF method. Tim is avail at Flashgear.net. He also sells flash gear, obviously. He might be able to directly help you in your quest as well.

In very simple terms, they set up the exposure WITHOUT THE FLASH to get the desired ambient...usually completely black...or histogram showing black. The background can be what you want...just up the exposure. Then, they use the grey card to set the flash to exactly the middle grey. This makes sense...too much flash and it exposes towards white, too little it exposes to black. You want to be in the middle. They add or subtract flash from there. Its genius and easy. They have some excellent YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1urLvveWjjU. In this video he explains the grey card method. One thing that I noticed is he used a light-skinned dummy head to show how to do the method. You could purchase a dark skinned head and use that to practice. Maybe get fancy and get a few wigs as well. Im seeing heads on Amazon for about $40 that would do the trick...

At first it seems difficult, but after a while, you get an "ah ha" moment and it is actually quite easy. Everything you do will be in manual. For me, M is much easier when using this method. Tim just shoots at f5.6, 160ss and 100 iso. Easy.

You need the transmitter and at least one off camera flash. In the few times I have done this you can use a stand and a diffuser or you can have an assistant hold the flash. I use, and I think they advocate, Godox gear. The menu on the back of the flash and the transmitters are kinda wonky, but they work. I actually made a small cheat sheet for mine.

You'll find, counter intuitively, that the larger diffusers close to the person makes for softer light. Re: Diffuser...you could easily carry a diffuser that will work..like an umbrella thing...mine is about 25 inches and in a small roll...easy to carry on with other gear.

RE skin color. I think the method above would allow you to home in on the exposure after a few shots. Maybe see if an employee there might cooperate to help you get started. Or as mentioned, try finding a cosmetology dummy that is dark skinned.

Re: White balance...using the OCF, you will be relying on your flash color quite a bit. I don't see how you could adjust the kelvin for the green room then deal with a white flash. I do know, I would shoot in raw to be able to adjust white balance as I see fit. I also know that in Lightroom, it is possible to very easily mask the subject (who would be exposed with a white flash) and deal with the green background in some way.

There is a guy on this forum, Shapiro, who has a lot of experience with flash stuff. I THINK there is a specialty subform on portraiture....suggest you reach out to him as well.

Jim,

I am an amateur who uses micro 43 gear because it suits me for a lot of reasons.

But if I were a professional, I would certainly look to up my game to full-frame gear with excellent lenses. Glass, more than any other gear, impacts the quality of the image. As CHG noted, why have a collection of out dated crop sensor cameras? Are there folks who use crop sensors and make money? Yep, and there is a guy in Colorado whom, as I recall vaguely, won a pulizer with a micro 43 camera. I think Robin Wong of m43 blogging fame uses a m43 for some wedding gigs. But the image quality that FF gear offers is unrivaled. Dont throw good money after bad...if my salary depended on my gear, I'd go with FF gear and pro glass. I leave it up to the fan boys to as to which brand.

But then again, I like spending other peoples' money!

You are 88? Full frame, crop, M43m, 1 inch, phone, or Brownie...what ever. Just keep at it. Its a hobby.

I get a kick out of folks who argue this stuff and then looking up some of their photographs in the gallery. You can fill in the blanks.

I downloaded that...exceptional information.

For all those folks talking about buying a camera for youngsters, this is a good one!

LR, for me, was not that difficult to learn. And I have a limited “hard drive” if you get drift.

It is not the size of the wand but the magic contained within it...or so I've tried to convince myself.

In the absence of a legitimate forum moderator, who has the authority and ability to move posts to the appropriate sections, freeze certain posts, and warn people about inappropriate behavior, this kind of thing happens.

Unfortunately, this main section is really the wild west of the forum. There is no significant moderation taking place. A good example is a discussion on ISO that has nearly 500 posts. There’s no reason for that. That is a scientific matter that clearly the camera manufactures fully understand and I am sure there is a scientific explanation as to what it exactly is. The same thing can go on and on with raw versus JPEG and some other topics.

What needs to happen is for admin to seek some legitimate and knowledgeable users of this forum, and have them moderate this main section. It also needs to have a section that discusses the topics that ultimately few people have scientific knowledge of who love to argue about. There can be significant discussions and disagreements , but when someone goes off the rails and starts insulting people that person needs to be warned and then removed from the forum.

The value of this forum, for me, is greatly diminished by the lack of moderation. Another example is that there is a travel section, yet, travel is allowed in this section. So there’s really no consistency across the site as to what goes where.

I belong to a financial site, Bogleheads, which has very strict, decor rules, and has a lengthy section that they call the wiki. The wiki is for those topics, which are not really debatable, or that are well established. The site is an exceptional site in that it gives very very good input from many people across the world. One of the reasons it is a good site is that it is moderated by some very smart people who will shut down this kind of behavior quickly. They will also shut down a post that essentially becomes a back-and-forth about some sort of topic and nothing newly informative is being discussed.

So we take this site for what it is: and that is the wild west of amateur photography.

Let me see if I can grab some links out of the article. Some are subscription based but one seems to have an $8 a month that can be cancelled. In the article, Firefly did an amazing job of restoring a photo that was badly damaged restoring torn off parts of a photo depicting a person.

https://photomyne.com/

https://www.myheritage.com/

https://www.adobe.com/sensei/generative-ai/firefly.html

Interesting coincidence. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal had an article on various apps, programs and services that restore photos. Here is the link:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/bring-old-photos-of-mom-to-life-with-these-apps-5bc8fc12

If it was only one photo, I'd just pay someone else to do it, but if there are more, perhaps some of the services mentioned may be of benefit to you.

And to the uneducated on the issue of law, robbery is the same as burglary. But it’s not, regardless of what people think or say.

Because some people think something does not make it right or accurate. To some, speech is violence. It is not.

Murder is the unlawful killing of an human. Which differentiates it from homicide, which is the lawful killing of a human.

The term Murder also has biblical implications. For instance the Commandment (I am not religious) is often mistakenly stated as thou shall not kill when in fact original text uses murder. Which makes the Commandment make sense. When one thinks about it, it makes sense otherwise how could anyone be part of the military, police service or even protect themselves or family from a deadly by using deadly force?

Once cannot murder an animal.

I do find trophy hunting objectionable. Could I shoot a deer and eat it? Yep. Never have but could.

I have killed my fair share of fish and eat them. Can’t say I lost any sleep over it. All eaten of course. Lots of blue fin tuna has been consumed around here the last few months. Sushi mostly.

Would I shoot a giraffe? Only if he were reaching into his waistband for a gun. And tomorrow we will be eating a murdered turkey…or should I say a lawfully killed turkey.

All of this could be wrong too. As Gary Larson pointed out in one of his famous cartoons, Col Sanders was standing before God and was dismayed to find out God was a chicken. If God is a tuna, I’ve some serious damnation problems.

Didn’t get one.

30 Trillion debt. Our grand children will be paying for that. Nothing is free

I failed to mention that...LR Classic...skip the other stuff for now. Excellent advice.

And random tutorials drove me crazy. Granted, it was a short drive, but still. Find one instructor who has an ORGANIZED scheme on instruction, go through that first. Jumping around would make this whole process unnecessarily difficult. Jumping from instructor to instructor, randomly on YouTube would be like jumping from channel to channel while watching ten movies at one time...it would drive one batty, take up time, and in the end, you wouldn't have accomplished anything.