BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: Stock Photography

studio lighting

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October 30, 2002

Depends on the kind of studio you want. If you are taking pics of small items, then a tabletop is a studio. :)

As for lighting, you can use any kind of lights as long as you keep them all matched up. Ie, if you use flourescents, stick with them. Use the same brand. Otherwise, you will get odd color casts which are not correctable in photoshop.

Desktop lamps and/or utility lamps work fine for normal spotlight sources. You can add a piece of vellum or wax paper in front of them to diffuse the light to create a soft light source. If you want to make the light harsher, you can place a honycomb sheet in front of the light source to make the light more directed. These can be picked up at a local hardware store or art supply house.

The other problem is that of cables and power. Have alot of extension cables... thick orange type from hardware stores. And get gaffers tape. It will be useful to keep cables down and prevent people from tripping.

That's about it. ^_^

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February 11, 2004

Halogen lighting is another term for tungsten lighting. Tungsten lighting is balanced at around 3200 - Kelvin. Fuji makes an excellent tungsten balanced slide film. Kodak also makes a tungsten based film but my experience is that the fuji
beats it hands down. Now Wing is correct in asking what kind of stuff you want to do. If you are shooting people/kids/pets then tungsten is probably not the way to go because it is very hot and hence uncomfortable for subjects. On the other hand
if you are doing table top or products then tungsten allows you to see exactly what you will get which is nice. A company called Smith and Victor makes some very affordable home studio lights. Lowell also makes good lights but these can be more expensive. If you do not need HUGE amounts of light my recommendation is that you go to your local home depot, buy some small - 5$ spot light fixtures, then get some Halogen Par 30 - Par 50 spots (9$ each) then get some cheap reostats one for
each light (dollar a piece) some extra cord. Re wire the lighting fixtures with the new cord and wire them to the reostats.....(these are very handy for playing with the light output for modeling with light etc) You can get tungsten light gels for about 3 bucks a sheet which will color the light as you want. If your home studio is small you can do just fine with 3 of these lights. I do all the time. Also you can construct a small relatively portable shooting stage simply by getting foam core
sheets from any art supply store (5 bucks each) if you get 6 for example you can
create a 3x3 foot shooting stage in say all white or black or whatever. Reflecting sheets in silver/gold are also available and cheaply at the supply stores. If you have an old slide projector you can get sheets of Vellium at the supply store for next to nothing and use this as a rear projector screen to project other slides on to it to create your own backdrops. Go to my site - then email me if you have more questions.

Rob

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February 19, 2004