 BetterPhoto Member |
How to Start Up Your Own Photo Studio?
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Shelley Sanders |
Sabrina, I have gone through many stages with my "home studio". I can give you the most basic of guidance on this. I started with desk lamps and fabric for backdrops. Then later I purchased foam board for backgrounds and a couple of flood lamps from the hardware store. THEN, I had my husband build a backdrop hanger out of PVC pipe and I purchased an auto light from the hardware store. LIGHT, very important to my digital. Just recently, my husband purchased a lighting kit for me consisting of three floods and diffusers. Before this, all expenses were next to nothing. Even this kit was affordable. I would suggest reflectors and or softboxes with such bright lights. You can also get creative with gels and express with color without changing your background. Oh yeah, I also purchased some basic white window shades. On one side of one I sponged black and pearl to create a smooth texture of gray for more professional portraits. Denise Miotke has a wonderful article on making backdrops at this site http://www.betterphoto.com/exploring/MakingBackDrops.php
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John A. Lind |
Sabrina, First point is a safety one. If you go the "hot light" route, especially with halogens, be careful when using light modifiers on them and ensure the heat has someplace to go *other* than starting a light modifier on fire. They're referred to as "hot lights" for very good reason. If you're using film, be aware that "hot lights" are *not* the same as daylight. Incandescent lamps have very little blue and a lot more red and yellow compared to daylight. The higher powered halogens are usually close enough to tungsten photo lights in color balance that you can use tungsten balanced film with them and get good results. If you're contemplating monolights (studio strobes) and even think you might eventually branch out into doing things like weddings, don't scrimp on the lights you buy. Save your money and get some higher powered ones. In a home studio you can crank the power down on them. At a wedding in a large church, the distances from lights to subjects are much farther and the spaces are much bigger (the light dissipates more). You'll *need* the power. BTW, I use a similar system at home in a dining room for photographing small objects and plants. My favored backdrop is pure black. These home-made backdrops are made from polar fleece which has very low reflectivity and very low texture. One of the other favored materials for achieving a deep pitch-black background is velvet, but select it carefully. Some velvets have a reflective sheen to them. I also found velvet to be quite expensive compared to similar lenghts of polar fleece. -- John
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Stephanie Post |
Anyway, back to the lights, I also use an autoshade for a reflector, it works just as good and sometimes better than the ones you can get for 30 bucks or more and only costs about 6 bucks! Happy shooting! Stephanie
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