I'm about to upgrade from a few simple speedlites with umbrellas to a couple of studio strobes with beauty dish / softbox for indoor portrait shooting. First I want to get one strobe and beauty dish and I like shooting at large apertures, f2.8 or even f2, but sometimes at higher apertures too. I also like having the light close to the subject to get a nice light falloff.
Is a 5-stop 250 Ws stobe (looking at Elinchrom BRX250 with a 16-260 Ws power range) too powerful for using with a beauty dish rather close to the subject at f2.8-f2?
I don't want to have a too high minimum power setting forcing me to use an ND filter on the camera. I realize there might not be any single strobe with large enough power range for all purposes and for my first strobe I want to prioritize beauty dish with large apertures.