Makeshift studio lighting?

Let me preface this by saying that I have no experience working in a

studio, and have no studio lighting equipment.

 

I'd like to play around with some flower photography. Not anything

closeup. Just to experiment.

 

My problem is that I don't know of a way to get softer lighting with

the stuff I have available in my home, and I'm looking to see if

anyone can suggest something. I don't own any flashes.

 

I have plenty of desk lamps, and I have a lightboard that I use to

view my slides. I was thinking of perhaps shining some bright lights

through a white sheet, maybe?

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can give :)

A bunch of gooseneck or clamp-on lamps with 100 watt or so floodlamps works pretty well for makeshift use. No problems at all with b&w and relatively little problem with digital. Too much hassle for most color films, tho', because of the color balance issue.

 

Another alternative is to buy three or more fairly powerful hotshoe type flash units and optical slave sensors to trigger them. There are also "peanut" flashes with built-in slave sensors that don't cost much. They can't be used on-camera, tho' - no provision for hotshoe or sync cord contacts.

 

The only catch with multiple flash use like this, tho', is that you'll either need a flash meter or spend some time manually calculating the total flash exposure. I managed fairly well doing the latter before getting a flash meter but the meter made things far quicker, easier and more reliable, which was much less taxing to the patience of my models (mostly family and friends).

Hi Nick

 

A white plastic shower curtain and a white plastic table cloth work pretty good. Look for the cheap stuff. I think I bought both for well under $10. The table cloth is thinner and produces a different effect. Ripstop nylon is probably the best choice but to just experiment with these work well. Hang the material close to the subject then move the light fixture back until you get the effect you want. The possibilities are pretty much endless as long as you don't have a melt-down... They can also be used as huge reflectors.

 

You have some nice photos in your portfolio.

 

Good luck

 

RDee

I use a large sheet of white cardboard as a reflector and point my flash to it, then I put another sheet on the other side of the subject to balance contrast. With a digital camera you don't need flashmeters, just take a picture, look at the histograms, and adjust the flash powers accordingly. I bought a used Sunpak torch with adjustable power between 1:1 and 1/64 using a little switch. Very convenient. If you use incandescent lighting, it's WYSIWYG ; but the lack of blue in that light will need some amplification in the camera white balance compensation, and give more noise in the blue channel, which is why the colours look more vibrant with flash.

One search for "macro lighting equipment" turned up several threads, such as: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-one-category?topic_id=1824&category=Macro+lighting

 

 

 

Good shooting!

I do not know if you have considered light painting, but if you shoot digital, it is fairly straightforward to generate stunning pictures of flowers with long exposures and a Maglite. With 3-4 iterations you usually end up with a stunning picture of a flower light painted. Obviously the feasibility of this technique depends on your basic requirements (artistic, documentary or scientific) and size of the flower.