Little help on small home studio

[mallik]

Friends,

 

I am trying to set up a 'budget' home studio, primarily, lighting with umbrellas,

screens etc. The idea is to have minimum gear to start with. I intend to use this

studio for photographing still objects and portraits. Can you please provide some

recommendations on the equipment. (And yes, I know that I may end up using the

Nikon to some degree for macro or other closeup photography, where my Leica may

not work for me!).

 

Thanks in advance

 

Mallik.

[patrick l.]

It depends on what you anticipate photographing the most, inanimate objects or people that move. If product work is what you will pursue the most, hot lights purchased second hand and 3/8" sheets of foam core make good sources of light & reflector boards cut to size. On the other hand, Speedotron and other studio lighting manufacturers make lighting kits (2 heads and a power pack) fairly reasonably priced. With the electronic flash equipment, you can pretty much shoot anything from product to portraits. Inexpensive strobe lighting, however, may not be sufficient for the small apetures required for micro work. So, I have only muddied the waters and not answered your question! Think about what you plan to shoot the most of and then pursue your equipment purchases. Good Luck!

[chip l.]

If you have hotshoe flashes you may find that with 400ISO film you may be able to do a "studio" cheap.

[dan_brown4]

I have an Alien Bees 160WS head and medium softbox (about

30"x42") on a Bogen 3086 stand. Reasonable cost and very

good performance. I strongly suggest a softbox over an

umbrella. Much easier to use in tight spaces. Better light too. I

added a 42" diameter sliver/white disc/reflector and I use for fill.

 

HTH

[chip l.]

dan you have a point, but umbrellas are far less then soft boxes. And for someone starting out a great way to go....

[fotografz]

Get convertible translucent umbrellas to start with. You can remove the outer shell, and

shoot through the translucent cover instead of bouncing the light like you do with the

covers on. It acts like a soft-box that way. Later on when you do get a soft-box you'll

always have the umbrellas for location portraits, which are much more convenient and

fast to set up.

[karl_knize]

If you're looking toward minimum gear, minimum cost with the

most control and flexibility, build yourself a couple of

shoot-through screens and commit to working with them long

enough to understand their potential. Soft boxes and umbrellas

are fine, and offer nice solutions for location packing and

transportation, but in the end are no match for a good diffuser

panel with a little thought in the application of your light source.

Here's an example: last week I shot a line of burial caskets on

location at the manufacturing plant in Tennessee. Boring (dead)

subject matter, to be sure, but complex and challenging

technical demands. The subject matter ran the gamut from

ebony to white, with a mix of wood,bronze, copper, highly

polished silver hardware in every conceivable configuration. And

to top it off, because of typical production scheduling, the first 14

pieces, the most critical, had to be shot the first day before the art

director flew back to Chicago with a disc. Three diffusion panels,

two 12' x 12' and one 4' x 4' , were used all the way through and

all went well. For subject matter that required long broad even

and soft illumination, soft boxes and diffusers were placed over

light sources. 'While other subject matter that required harder

light were done with harder or raw light heads shooting through

the diffuser, at varying distances to the diffuser to increase or

decrease contrast. Also, a few shots were made with light

sources on both sides of the diffuser, in front for hard light to

bring out wood grain and texture and behind for highlights and

reflections. The scale on this setup is obviously way bigger than

your application, but the concepts are the same in a small studio

environment. A shoot- through screen allows you to control

contrast and highlight placement in a way that no other system

can match. And even if you have softboxes, reflectors and

umbrellas, a screen is still an indespensable tool for still life, as

it allows you to create subtle shading and falloff by placing cards

between your light source and the diffuser panel. And it works

equally well for people. A large shoot-through placed near your

portrait subject, with a small light source allows you to create an

infinite combination of lighting effects by changing the distance

from the light source to the panel. PVC tubing from the

hardware and a neutral frosted shower curtain taped to it will get

you started for next to nothing. And a wood, metal or PVC frame,

a grommeted piece of sail cloth from a sail maker, and some

Matthews knuckes and clamps will allow you to make a pivoting

screen on stands for far less than what you can buy in the

Calumet catalog. I hope this is helpful to you. I think you're

starting in the right place, and I hope you never forget that great

artificial lighting is more often than not simple lighting. And that

buying more tools and gizmos can't replace attention to detail

and practice.

[karl_knize]

If you go to http://www.superspec.com/, you can order frosted

diffustion material in 54" wide rolls that will allow you to make up

nicely sized panels to your needs.

[karl_knize]

The beauty of shoot-through. One light source.<div></div>

[mallik]

I thank you all for those answers which I am sure will help me in making the

decisions.

 

Karl, I like some of your ideas. But I would still need a light source right? I mean in

addtion to a diffusion panel. One of the aspects that was never clear to me was, what

wattage for hot lights is right. I understand typically I might need two or three lights,

probably one being weaker (for background lighting for example). What type of lights

are good for these. I am prefering hot lights to flashes, for I feel as a beginner in

studio photography, I better see the light than predict it, and worry about light

temparature later. Space is definitely a constraint (proabably 10'X10' max.).

 

Mallik.

[karl_knize]

Mallik -- I'm giving you this advice because it's the way I learned

how to light when I worked in some very large commercial

studios in Chicago 20 + years ago, and it's served me very well.

What I'm trying to get at here is creating the building blocks for

yourself that will lead to true lighting mastery.

 

The beauty of incandescent (hot) lights is that they're relatively

inexpensive, and as you say, you can see and shape your

lighting with much more accuracy than strobe. This is why soft

boxes and large umbrellas are so popular as single light

sources for strobe work, because the modelling lights are a fair

approximation of the quality of the strobe light, and the quality of

the light is very forgiving. But once you use shaping devices on

strobe heads -- reflectors, grids, flags and barn doors-- your

ability to see your results is difficult and you often end up working

with polaroid or digital capture to see your results. As your

lighting ability and needs increase, so does your cost.

 

With still life, if you don't have hight wattage units all you have to

do is expose longer and take a look at the reciprocity info. for the

film you're using. A 650W or 1000W main light is fine for basic

still life that doesn't require a lot of depth of field / small aperture.

And a 200W or 400W for background and fill is fine. Remember,

you don't have to expose everything at the same time, and you

can modify the time on different elements of the scene as you

wish.

 

With people, a 650W or 1000W is often sufficient if you're

working with moderate or fast films, and with a tripod.

Commercial studios would often use 2000W to 5000W main

lights, often in groups, for large format work. But this is a thing of

the past and you wouldn't want the electric bill. Also, lights larger

than 1000W are circuit poppers in many homes.

 

The trick is to start simply,. as you say, and build one step at a

time. Don't go to multiple lights unless you have a reason that's

clear to you. Here's what I recommend:

 

Make up one or two diffusion panels, maybe 4'x4' and 4'x6' or 8'

if you have the space. Work within your limitations. Get a mirror

or two, some white board or foam core, some silver board and

card to use as reflectors. Gat a black card or two to block (gobo)

off the light as you need. Make up some simple card stands out

of bricks, sticks or whatever you have. Use no more than one

light for a main light and one light for background if your

background is dark or you want light shaping. Move the main

light around, at varying distances and angles to the diffuser, and

also move the diffuser as you wish and look closely at what's

going on. Try two diffusers stacked together. Try bouncing your

main light off of a white card through the diffuser. Try anything

that comes into your head. This is like Zen I suppose, and will

tell you more about yourself, your patience and your eye than you

might care to know.

 

If you start here and work a little at it, you'll learn how to create

the quality of light you want from just about any kind of light

source . Then, when you buy other kinds of lighting tools, you'll

know what they're going to do for you.

 

Feel free to email me at any time if you have questions or need

help.

[karl_knize]

Mallik -- I forgot that you said your space was 10' x 10' or so. My

rule of thumb is that small space = small setup = small subject

matter= small light sources = small diffusion panels and

reflectors. If you're going to be shooting subject matter such as

flowers, vases, small objects, then a diffusion panel 2'x2' or 3'x3'

will work for you. Just remember, the larger the light source, at

the same distance to the subject as a smaller light source, will

give you softer light and shadowing. For still life, the ideal is to

have a light source / panel that's twice as large as the subject

matter. This allows you to create very soft light if you need it, or

harder light by moving the panel farther away, moving your light

closer to the diffusion panel, or a combination of both.