Ultimate Studio

<p> I’m taking the plunge and setting up my own home studio. My gut tells me to go with 3 White Lightning X1600 but what I really want is a set of Elinchrom Digital Style 600RX or 500BXRI’s. My concern is I’ll have too much light since I’m working in a small room 16’X16’. I really like the fact the X1600’s from White Lightning can stepped down over a 7 f-stop range. I plan on using these for children and family portraits. I really don’t have a budget, I plan on keeping whatever I get for a very long time so I want to get it right! I've spent days and nights searching high and low so my question is, What’s in your ultimate studio?</p>

<p>12-18 foot high ceilings. :) 16x16 is a workable size for your use, but 8 foot ceilings are a bummer.</p>

 

<p>Too much light isn't a problem. If you can't turn your strobes down far enough, you can add neutral-density gels to knock down the light by 1, 2, or 3 stops.</p>

<p>I shoot in a very small space, and indeed ceiling height is more of a problem than any others.</p>

<p><Chas><br /></p>

For the size of your studio I would think that 3 white lightnings are over-kill. Even if you turn down the power, then you have to deal with diminishing flash-duration. I have a couple of 340WS units and have to turn them down to 1/4, Power and even then, I still have to lower the ISO to it's lowest and decrease the aperture when I dont really want to. My working space is about 15X20.

 

Charle is right though some Neutral Density filters should help tone down the light.

<p>Rarely would I need three lights of that power. If I were designing my ultimate studio, I'd want two relatively powerful lights out front, and at least two smaller lights on booms for use as background lights and hair lights. For the booms, a pack/head system would be nice because it keeps most of the weight on the floor instead of on the end of a boom. Power could be a fraction of the power of the main light, since hair lights and background lights typically don't need to go through light-sucking softening modifiers.</p>

<p>The reason I had chosen the X1600 was they could be dialed down to 5watts using the 1/4 power button. I just dont want to be stuck with something I cant grow into. Having said that any recommendations?</p>

<p>One light Jose. The learning curve is so much more gentle to the soul. Pick up a good quality head, then start learning what you can do with it. Reflection..softening, hard shadow edges, drop off.<br>

I think we can miss the obvious sometimes, by complication. You can put a single light just above your lens, and use it as a fill, using ambient as the main light source. A bit like a popup flash on top of a camera..one with an adjustable output.</p>