Moments
I did not have a light meter to tell me the proper f-stop to set my aperture, nor did I have polaroid back to see what things actually looked like. My camera was a Canon AE-1 Program, manual everything.
I would make the flashes pop every so often so I could see where and how the light fell, I did a few calculation to determine possible f-stops based on feet of the flash away from the subject, how much light I would lose because of the gel on the flash, it was the best I could do.