Mannequin bust product photography... with 3 wireless flash units?

<p>Let me start off by saying that I'm an audio engineer and not a pro photographer, though I'd consider myself a enthusiast.<br>

With that out of the way this is my first post here, be gentle!<br>

My wife and I would use your professional advice, thanks in advance for reading this far!</p>

<ul>

<li><strong>Objective</strong><strong>:</strong> Shooting knitted products (scarfs and shawls, long and short) on a white cloth mannequin bust for use in instructional print and web.</li>

<li><strong>Location:</strong> My living room (fairly small), light walls, 8' white ceiling</li>

<li><strong>Current Equipment:</strong> Pentax K10D, basic lens, Pentax AF-540-FGZ Flash, Gary Fong clouds</li>

<li><strong>My Bright Idea (insert laugh here) ...:</strong> Purchase two Pentax AF-360FGZ's, and use all three flashes with Gary Fong clouds mounted on microphone stands (not sure how yet, maybe via adapters?) to provide basic 3 point lighting. I have 3 Manfrotto 13foot tripod stands adapted for microphones I use for remote audio recordings, maybe I could use two to hold a white backdrop, I'd need a crossbar and way to attach.</li>

</ul>

<p>I'm fully aware that the above idea might be a little crazy, but I do get great results with just one flash and a gary fong cloud, but the shadows are killing the shot. Currently our 'backdrop' is a curtain... We're looking at getting a white canvas backdrop so we can blow out the background in post.<br>

We're aware that great shots = big bucks to do it right, (much like when I do pro audio), and we're all about doing it right... on a reasonable budget... this is where pros like you come in, help!<br>

Any direction would be very much appreciated!</p>

<p>Your planned setup will produce enough light for what you need, and can easily produce shadowless lighting but...<br>

Lighting isn't about having the right amount of light (that's just a very small part of it) and is more about controlling the light in a way that creates and uses shadows to show the product/subject at its best. Please see <a href="http://www.lencarta.com/2009121893/light-shaping-tools-compared/index.php">this article</a> on the Lencarta website, which demonstrates what the different light shaping tools actually do.<br>

You have two things working against you. Firstly, you have a pretty small space that's painted white, which means that it will be difficult to place the lights exactly where they need to be and the white walls and low ceiling will make it difficult to stop unwanted light bounce, and secondly you're planning to use flashguns that are difficult to control in that you can't really use the light shaping tools that you need to created the lighting effects that you need. Studio flash would be far easier, and possibly cheaper too.<br>

To a large extent, you can overcome the unwanted light bounce problem by painting the ceiling black and hanging black drapes on the walls.</p>

<p>Thanks so much for your response, I'll read the article asap!<br>

I can get my living room very very dark when needed, and I'd love to hear lighting suggestions other than my non-photographer idea. You mentioned studio flashes for this situation, mind nudging me in the right direction?<br>

<em>What I really want to know is this:</em> In my situation with a budget of around $1K (is that reasonable?), what would a pro do? And with what lighting equipment?</p>

<p>Brian,<br>

Studio pros spend many times your budget on lighting - but they need to, because they have to shoot a wide variety of subjects and typically use a range of different sized cameras, some of which need much more lighting energy than others.<br>

Your budget should be fine for your needs, and a lot of beginners in The States like <a href="http://www.alienbees.com">Alien Bees</a> lighting, which seems to offer good value for money. Generally, the law of diminishing returns applies to lighting (as to most things in life) and you need to spend a LOT more money to get improved output consistency, improved colour temperature consistency etc.<br>

As for the actual lighting equipment you need, firstly you need to learn something about lighting itself and <a href="00BjHh">these Lighting Themes</a> may help with that process, or you could buy a copy of Light: Science & Magic, which is pretty much the bible for lighting.<br>

But, just to start you off in the right general direction, you need to think about controlled light that casts shadows in the direction you need, e.g. the emphasise the texture of the fabric, so light shapers such as standard reflectors, beauty dishes, that sort of thing.</p>

<p>I don't think you will need to go so far as Alien Bees at this point. Shoe mount flashes in a small room will get the job done and now-a-days you can buy a variety of shaping tools for a shoe mount flash (http://www.honlphoto.com/servlet/StoreFront). I am not saying it isn't easier with a studio flash but the whole point here is you need to learn lighting and you can do that with shoe mount flashes just fine to start. Another popular website would be Strobist.com (http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html) and that will have loads of advice on using off-camera flash. If you want my immediate advice, I would lose the Lightsphere! But that's me.</p>

<p>Garry and John, your responses are invaluable!</p>

<p>It's clear that I have a lot of reading to do, and thanks for the nudge in the right direction. I know exactly the look we're going for, but I can't put it in to technical terms yet.</p>

<p>This is my translation to my career field: Much like in pro audio, one can easily spend $10+K on a simple 2 mic special to record a live acoustic event such as a recital, and I could certainly give a world of pro advice on this subject depending on what one needs to do. The fact is, most musicians that just want to record themselves in a practice room would only need to spend spend a few hundred dollars these days on a decent personal recorder and they'll have everything they need. It takes someone like me to explain differences in equipment to them, and they don't have to become experts themselves to get some pretty amazing results as long as they understand a few key fundamentals like audio levels and microphone placement depending on their instrumentation and environment. Sure it's great if they make a career out of it and learn all about sound wave properties, acoustic reflection, acoustic dampening, phasing, comb filtering, anatomy of a microphone, cable shielding, the history of recording methods etc. but at the end of the day they just want to put up a simple device to record and play back their rehearsal, they're not recording an album and they don't have $10K+!</p>

<p>I'm looking forward to coming back to these forums after much reading with a proposed equipment list for your review :)</p>

<p>Thanks again!</p>

<p>That's the analogy I can understand! :) (there was a previous comment about using a Mac program called 'GarageBand' compared to professional audio software solutions... though it was helpful to me I think it got deleted.)</p>

<p>Point received, and I now know where to start... reading that is. This is a completely different beast for me.</p>

<p>I'm on part 3 of Studio Lighting & Equipment (links provided above), lots to read and digest.</p>

<p>Looks like my GarageBand reference was deleted! Which means this point will probably be deleted. It's a shame, one of my associates use to post here but was disenchanted with the censoring of posts and stopped. But I will echo the comment that you should read Light: the Science and Magic. That is invaluable and might prevent my post from being deleted. But for the record: GarageBand still Rules!</p>

<p>Yes, Light: Science & Magic is invaluable - and relevant to this thread.<br>

Your reference to Garageband wasn't, so I deleted it.<br>

Posts on PN are NOT censored, they are moderated to keep the threads on track. One of the things which is definately not allowed is comments on forums about moderation. If you feel that the moderator - me in this case - is wrong then either say nothing, say what you have to say to the site admin by email, or volunteer to become a moderator. Further off topic comments will be deleted and further comments that contravene terms of use will probably result in YOU being deleted.<br /> Comments that are helpful and relevant are welcome.</p>

<p>I see. And light humor isn't helpful and/or relevant. Even the OP said they understood the analogy. By deleting my post you <em>did</em> censor what I had written. And while I am sure this post too will be deleted, it will be done after you have read it. So in conclusion, I will save the moderators here at Photonet the time and trouble and I to shall bow out from participating for I do believe the light humor is helpful. Cheers.</p>