Okay. I think I may have settled on this lighting setup for my 8x10 shots. I want to place the beauty dish carefully so that I get some feathering on the backdrop, but overall I am quite happy with this. It isn't overly boring, but it also isn't anything too crazy that I'm going to screw up when I'm exposing film.

I used a beauty dish mid right, pointed down, and on the left I have this right angle dome type modifier that directs all light 90 degrees of strobe pointed at a large bounce card. Underneath dog is another card that is angled around 30 degrees pointed towards him.

There is good definition, he isn't perfectly evenly lit, and it has the harder more contrasty light I am after. The only editing I did on both of these images are adding a little contrast and moire reduction.

Thoughts on this lighting??