Question on first purchase (lighting)

Kwarta

Ok so I am gonna make my first official lighting purchase. What would be more beneficial for portraits. Strobe light or soft box? :dunno

ziggy53

Kwarta wrote:

Ok so I am gonna make my first official lighting purchase. What would be more beneficial for portraits. Strobe light or soft box?

Since a soft box is a light modifier for an electronic flash, the flash would seem the logical first purchase.

What sort of portraits do you have planned?
Studio/controlled indoor or outdoor/environmental?
What lighting setup will you use? (Broad lighting, short lighting, butterfly ...)
What lenses will you be using?

derekn

I am curious to in what to start, I take a lot of portraits (new daughter) and am looking to expand beyond the pop-up flash on my Canon XTi. I am lost in what to begin with. I have started to read some books on general photography but there are so many routes to go, that quite honestly get's me even more confused.

Kwarta

ziggy53 wrote:

Since a soft box is a light modifier for an electronic flash, the flash would seem the logical first purchase.

What sort of portraits do you have planned?
Studio/controlled indoor or outdoor/environmental?
What lighting setup will you use? (Broad lighting, short lighting, butterfly ...)
What lenses will you be using?

To be honest I am really just start out. As of right now I generally shoot out doors. Shooting friends and family kinda thing. I really want to get into boudoir. I am working on starting to shoot in doors. I really have a lot to learn about lighing, besides strobist any other advise for learning?

ziggy53

derekn wrote:

I am curious to in what to start, I take a lot of portraits (new daughter) and am looking to expand beyond the pop-up flash on my Canon XTi. I am lost in what to begin with. I have started to read some books on general photography but there are so many routes to go, that quite honestly get's me even more confused.

Kwarta wrote:

To be honest I am really just start out. As of right now I generally shoot out doors. Shooting friends and family kinda thing. I really want to get into boudoir. I am working on starting to shoot in doors. I really have a lot to learn about lighing, besides strobist any other advise for learning?

I'll answer this in a way that will probably benefit the original poster as well, so we don't hijack the thread.

Generally, the best way to improve lighting using electronic flash is to:

Move the flash farther away from the central axis of the lens.
Diffuse the flash "and" create a larger emitting surface.

You can also start adding multiple flashes which allow even more control of the lighting and allow completely different "types" of lighting.

The simplest way to get started is to add an external flash to the hot shoe of your camera. This has the benefit of lifting the light a bit and moving it away from the lens.

Adding a flash modifier like the following will lift the light even more and allow more diffusion and spread the light to give a larger emitting surface.

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Flash modifiers:

You can create your own light modifiers (DIY). A couple that I can recommend are:

http://www.fototime.com/inv/908195739C4C0D3

http://abetterbouncecard.com/

Joe Demb also makes an interesting device for sale (reasonable):

http://www.dembflashproducts.com/flipit/

I own a FlipIt product and it works well and is very well made.

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Combining the above with a flash bracket and off-camera cord allows even more seperation from the camera, further lifting the light. The off-camera cord can also be used hand-held to move the flash off-center or to aim it in other creative ways.

Learn about basic flash technique:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2007/06/lighting-102-introduction.html
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=71206
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=70335
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=4266


Go through as much of these articles as you can and when you have questions about how to proceed, feel free to ask the hardware questions here and the setup questions in "Technique".

Kwarta

Thanks Ziggy