I was at a trade show on the weekend for the Hardware store I work at and I was speaking with a dude from Fidelity Electronics. They have been making cheap tripods for quite some time and have also begun carrying more accessories.
He told me about some strobes they are carrying from a company called Zeikos.
They have two strobes, one for Canon and one for Nikon (hitting the market any time now)
both have TTL and full manual controls and should retail around $200 Canadian.
As the days of picking up SB 28's for 50$ are long gone, this could be an excellent option for our type of photography. I hope to pick up the Nikon one when it is released. They also do a bunch of other accessories cheap. Unfortunately they haven posted any specs on their site but you can browse through their products here:
fidelityelectronics.com/en/products/defa...asp?cat=Camera+Flash
I cant vouch for thei quality I am simply sharing the info on what looks like could be a pretty reasonably priced unit.