Home studio for glamour photography - equipment?

I want to start doing fashion/artistic nude photography with my wife. I have no

idea where to start..... I'm thinking about setting up a small home studio, and

have been looking at the Photoflex First Studio Lighting Kit (2 250-watt

tungsten lights with stands and umbrellas) and the First Studio Backdrop support

kit. They seem to be reasonably priced and easy to set up and break down. Is

this a good choice for a beginner? What color backdrops are the most useful?

Muslin or paper backgrounds? Is there anything else I should consider?<div></div>

Chuck, do yourself and your wife a favor and look at getting some studio strobes instead of tungsten lighting. 250 watts is not really that much light and there is a lot of heat coming off those lights. There are several brands out there that are reasonable in price- Alien Bees and Novatron come to mind immediately, but there are a lot of brands available. I'm sure someone will come along with some more ideas for you. You are lucky in that you will have a beautiful model to work with. That always helps!

Chuck,

 

Check out http://www.williamcoupon.com/

 

He uses ONE Strobe with a small/Medium Softbox and a Muslin background (and has for

years).

 

One Alien Bees 800 with a Straight Stand and a Medium Softbox. Use Black fabric and

Velcro (or Tape) to mask off sections of the softbox to shape the light.

Thanks for the link to the single light shooter in NYC. Great stuff.

Depending on your budget you could use a 43" combination umbrella instead of a softbox. Umbrellas are a LOT cheaper if you are on a budget.

 

Advice, if you look at eBay, be very careful. There is a B800 that the current bid is $228, list price is $280. I've seen a few where the final bid was actually HIGHER than list price for a NEW strobe.

 

The ABs have a built in optical slave, that can be triggered by your cameras pop-up flash. Just set the pop-up to manual (to eliminate the pre-flashes). Then adjust the power level down to an appropriate fill level, or as low as it will go to not have the popup flash affect the final image.

 

You can get unbleached musin at Joanne Fabrics. Or look for any other background that might work. Some people like black or colored velvet. And watch out for white, there were reports of people where the white was not white when photographed. Apparently some flash w/o UV filtration triggered the color dyes in white fabric. So the recommendation I've read is if you want to use white fabric get a color corrected (UV filtered) flash tube.

 

My friend has both paper and fabric backgrounds, and he told me that he has to be careful with the paper or it will tear. With muslin you can walk on it and otherwise mistreat it w/o damaging it.

 

You can make reflectors out of foam core, and a stand to clamp it to.

 

gud luk, Gary

If you are going to be shooting Digital, Tungsten lighting is not a bad option plus you can allways move up to strobe. I just bought a smithVictor tungsten lighting kit which consist of 2 10" 500wat reflectors with diffusers, 1 8" reflector and 1 5" reflector for about $140. I already had the stands so I did not have to purchase them. If you are going to be shooting from home I'm assuming that your studio space is about 20X20 maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller. A 250watt bulb is plenty enough. I have about 20X20 home studio space and I haven't even tried the 500watt bulbs, because the 250watt bulbs do such a fine job of eluminating the entire room. Photogrpahers have been working with tungsten lighting for decades until the strobe aka flash-head came along. The good thing is that they provide smooth softer lighting plus you can see exactly what you going to get. The bad thing is that most bulbs have a max-life of about 25 hours and produce a large amount of heat. Make sure your air-conditioner is working. For a really good book on lighting check out this site: http://www.lightingmagic.com/directry.htm

Tungsten lights are good for shy beginners, they are so hot that your model sheds her clothes in no time. Seriously, I would suggest a simple one mono light studio flash to start with, and a reflector or two. Paper backround needs some sort of stand to hold it properly and the rolls that you need for anything but 1/2 body portraits are quite big. Muslin is maybe easier to begin with if you don't have a proper place to keep everything. Or you can just get a wide piece of curtain fabric or similar to get started.

I am currently selling my set of 2 500W tungsten lights to switch to strobes. Even at 500W they don't produce enough useable light unless placed very close to the subject and using a large aperture. I would find some strobes or at least one and use some reflectors. But if you really want some hotlights let me know. As I said, I'm selling mine.