Building a Photo Studio - Advice Please

anonymouscuban · December 7, 2009

I am about to turn my garage into a photo studio. I don't have the exact measurements right now but it is your typical 3 car garage. First thing I have to do is clean it out. :rolleyes Not looking forward to that. However, I thought it better to start planning now so I can get this done right.

The garage currently has a false ceiling at about 8.5,. I plan to knock this out to expose the joist and get much more head room. What I have found while shooting in my home with 8' ceilings is that I am limited to how high I can place my lights and I also get a lot of bounced light. I am thinking that more head room is better.

I pretty much can finish it how ever I desire. From painting the walls to the floor and hanging background rods, etc. I am pretty handy so I can build pretty much anything. I can also run electrical so I plan on running various outlets so I can place my lights any where without have cord runs all over the place.

My questions are:

1. What color should I paint the walls?
2. The floor is cement. Should I paint it, if so, what color? I am thinking I should leave it and use tile boards, fabric and other props to change the flooring specific for the shot.
3. Is it better to have more room from front to back or left to right, from the perspective of the camera?
4. Is there any other question(s) I should be asking?

Thanks,
Alex

Jeremy Winterberg · December 7, 2009

Are you allowed to use the entire garage? If so, I wish my parents were like your wife! But noooo my brother's mustang, 350Z, 1000 GXR crotchrocket, and my dad's boat get the garage.... I get the low ceiling basement

not even worth it.

anonymouscuban · December 7, 2009

Jeremy Winterberg wrote:

Are you allowed to use the entire garage? If so, I wish my parents were like your wife! But noooo my brother's mustang, 350Z, 1000 GXR crotchrocket, and my dad's boat get the garage.... I get the low ceiling basement not even worth it.

I get the whole garage with one compromise: my wife still has to be able to park her 350Z in it but I can move it out when I want to shoot.

I learned a lesson long ago and that is life is full of compromises if you wish to share it with other people. Right now, it's your parents. Later it will be your wife, kids, partner, whoever it may be that you want to share your life with.

BTW, consider yourself lucky to have the basement. When I was growing up, I had to share a room with my sister. Then when I became a teen, I then moved into my brother's room , which for a while was shared also by an adult cousin who came from Cuba. When my brother and cousin moved out, I had to share it with my grandfather because he moved in with us. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for you.

Looking back though, I wouldn't have changed a thing.

Jeremy Winterberg · December 7, 2009

anonymouscuban wrote:

I get the whole garage with one compromise: my wife still has to be able to park her 350Z in it but I can move it out when I want to shoot.

I learned a lesson long ago and that is life is full of compromises if you wish to share it with other people. Right now, it's your parents. Later it will be your wife, kids, partner, whoever it may be that you want to share your life with.

Yeah, understandable... What color is her 350Z? my brother's is like a burnt orange... it looks sick! I love that car, but it just sits there because he's in Iraq right now.

And I don't really care right now (about having the basement), I'm going to school in Indiana, home is in Wisconsin. Don't even have time to use my "studio". If you're looking at building a seamless wall for your studio I have a cheap DIY solution that I made in my basement: http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=137246&highlight=seamless+wall

Gary752 · December 7, 2009

Hi Alex...I too am looking to setup a studio in the near future. I believe you stated that your garage is a 3 bay. If that is the case, and they are the typical/standard sized bays, I would think that the remaining 2 bays would be large enough for a studio. Of course I would still move the wife's car outside during a shoot. One would think a car sitting in there during a shoot might cause a distraction.

Also, if you paint the floor, it would be recommended that you acid etch the concrete before painting, especially if anything had been spilled on the floor. The pores of the concrete need to be perfectly clean for the paint to adhere, and I would use a high grade concrete or epoxy paint. Otherwise you'll be repainting the floor from time to time. A better option might be to lay tile on the floor. I'm sure Nikoli will chime in soon, and I'd be interested in seeing what he recommends.

GaryB

ian408 · December 7, 2009

350Z. Nice car. Have you had a chance to drive a GTR? How does it compare? I saw a really nice looking black GTR today -- if I didn't already have an RS4, I might consider a GTR. My only other experience was some years ago with the "last" 300ZX Twin Turbo. That was a sweet car.

If you take the ceiling out, consider painting the rafters white. This will allow you to use it for a more reliable bounce. As for the floor, you could epoxy paint it white. There are kits available to DIY or you could have it done for you. Not sure about depth. Also, about the color of the floor or ceiling. You might want to make sure the colors match so you're not dealing with odd color casts or anything like that.

You might also look at the various rail systems for mounting lights from the ceiling -- it might make your lighting setup easier to manage considering you'll be sharing the space at least some of the time.

redleash · December 7, 2009

One of our DGrinners, "Sam," just built a studio in his house. I saw pics of it and it looked great. You might contact him for advice.

Lauren

anonymouscuban · December 7, 2009

redleash wrote:

One of our DGrinners, "Sam," just built a studio in his house. I saw pics of it and it looked great. You might contact him for advice.

Lauren

Is there a thread? If so, can you post a link?

Thanks,
Alex

Jeremy Winterberg · December 7, 2009

anonymouscuban wrote:

Is there a thread? If so, can you post a link?

Thanks,
Alex

http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=147898

But he has only posted pictures of his office space. However that is very similar to how I want my studio office to look when I get dedicated space for one.

Deacon · December 7, 2009

Studio Solutions
I have set up a studio in a lower level room. It has 10 foot ceilings so that is not an issue. I like the idea of opening up the ceiling in your garage if possible and either leave the joists and as suggested paint white. Better yet, if you could head off as large an area as possible and raise the ceiling in that area it would be great. Even if you sell the house a car guy could place a lift in that area.

I used 2" ABS pipe to form up a rack to hang drops as I did not want anything permanently attached to the walls or ceiling. Cheap and easily modified based on situation. Went to a fabric company and bought muslin in black and white for now. The overall width is 12 feet which is more than enough since my max shooting distance is about 14 feet. I did NOT glue the joints so it could be easily taken down if need be or modified.

For your floor I might suggest Race Deck http://www.racedeck.com/
It is a snap together floor in a wide range of colors, solid surfaces and grid. It is easy to keep clean which in a garage is always an issue. I don't think you would shoot using that surface but your drop would lay nicely on it. Paints and epoxy WILL fail if you did not place a v600apor barrier under the concrete to prevent moisture from coming up. Even the best epoxy is only guaranteed for 15 years and could be expensive for the 500-600 sq. ft. of garage floor.

I would paint the walls and ceiling (if there is one) a basic white. You can always lower light levels but it is really tough to add light in some circumstances. Whatever color you might use will influence the photo color range.

I also used dimmable florescent hd lighting with 6500 degree bulbs for white light. My wife uses the same lighting in her painting studio so it is consistent without color influence. Also placed some track lighting for additional flexible lighting to studio lights.

Good luck, it will always be a bit of a work in progress.

Deacon

blaser321 · December 8, 2009

I just built a garage studio it is all white with a light gray epoxy floor. The floor needs to be covered with something because I spend a lot of time shooting from there
you know model on sheep skin keep it eye level. and when shooting on a black BG every time someone steps on it it will leave a foot print if the floor is not very clean. I make every one wipe there feet on a slightly wet piece of carpet
and if you take out the ceiling it will be harder to heat and A/C the room this very important as I soon discovered that even a cool evening it can hot under the lights even with just the modeling light on the strobes. Now my garage has A/C but my house does not. Priorities. And more room front to back, that I wish I had

LiquidAir · December 8, 2009

I vote for white walls which you can cover with black muslin when you need to. Depending on how you shoot and the size of your space, most of the time you'll want the fill you get from bounce off the walls.

As for the floor, grey or black.

Wineman · December 8, 2009

a 3 car garage should be about 30'x20', I would use it on the long side to give me more space to move back and forth, that way you can use long telephotos for portraits, and it give you more space to maneuver and place your subject or lights further from the background, but then again you can leave the long wall uncluttered and use that one if needed...

Color wise I would paint it white, you can use gobo's to stop light from bouncing back if that is a concern, or you can gel lights and change the color if you desire. Or simply use the walls as bouncing surfaces.

If possible do a Cyclorama, this is an infinity wall, think of it as a permanent roll of seamless paper from floor to ceiling that can be painted over and over again. Google it if you don't know how they are made.

Make your ceiling as high as possible, preferably 14' high, this will help you with lights and bouncing.

Electric fixtures I would not worry a lot, unless you are going to use a gazzillion lights, just have a couple on each wall (except the background wall), or you can hang them from the ceiling.

There are about 48 million post on making your home studio and also videos on YouTube of people showing what they have done, take a look, get Ideas, also go and see Pro studios, almost every photographer I follow on blogs has a link buried in their web page's that shows how they made their studio, you can get really good ideas from them. I know that Chase Jarvis has video that shows his studio, also Bert Stephani has blogged about his new studio, Zack Arias also has info in his page (that is where I got the Cyclorama idea from)... hell here you go... http://www.zarias.com/?p=71 follow that link and you will see Zack's studio, he can explain it much better than I can...

Good luck

Z.

anonymouscuban · December 8, 2009

Very good information here so far. Thanks everyone. I was in my garage last night checking things out. I think I will end up setting things up so the camera is positioned on longer side so I have more room front to back. I will probably end up painting the walls white. I will probably either epoxy or acid stain the cement in gray color.

I did check out Zack Arias site. Extremely helpful. I can easily configure my garage the way he has his studio setup. I will be out of town this weekend but I plan to start cleaning the garage the following weekend. I will post pictures and dimensions once I am done cleaning it out. I should have a better idea by then of how things will pan out and maybe ask for more specific help then.

divamum · December 8, 2009

The only "real" studio I've used was purpose built in the arts building at the college where I work. FWIW, it was 100% black - as I understood it the theory was that it's easier to add light than get rid of it (since if the walls are white there will ALWAYS be some bounce going on, and it's harder to control it than if you specifically add it where you want it). They had a great overhead grid system which I would strongly suggest including if it's possible for you (makes it soooo much easier).

And now i"ll just sit here in envy and pout. Your 3-car garage is approximately the original footprint of my HOUSE

(not exaggerating - my house, although since added to and modified, started its life in 1928 as a 25x35' bungalow)

anonymouscuban · December 8, 2009

divamum wrote:

The only "real" studio I've used was purpose built in the arts building at the college where I work. FWIW, it was 100% black - as I understood it the theory was that it's easier to add light than get rid of it (since if the walls are white there will ALWAYS be some bounce going on, and it's harder to control it than if you specifically add it where you want it). They had a great overhead grid system which I would strongly suggest including if it's possible for you (makes it soooo much easier).

And now i"ll just sit here in envy and pout. Your 3-car garage is approximately the original footprint of my HOUSE (not exaggerating - my house, although since added to and modified, started its life in 1928 as a 25x35' bungalow)

Sometimes I wish I lived in a small house. We live in a 3,000 sq/ft house, 4 bedroom/3 bath. It's just my wife and I. I think we use about 35% if the house most of the time. The formal living room and dining room never gets used unless we have company over and that's only when it is more than a handful of people. Besides the kitchen and our bedroom, we may use the family room a couple times a week when we have movie night or when I have my Call of Duty game night... btw, any dgrinners play COD MW2 on PS3, friend me... my name is the same as here.

Problem is that we still need to heat, cool and maintain the whole house. It's amazing because when we moved into this bigger house 6 years ago, we anticipated our carrying costs would go up but not exponentially. Everything is more expensive. And then we get stiffed with what I refer to as the "Nice Neighborhood" premium when ever we need some type of service done on our home. Contractors, pest control, pool guy, you name it, the minute they drive into our neighborhood, there price goes up 35%. It is why I do as much as I can myself.

But there are perks as well, like a 3 car garage.

Until now, I thought of it as just a larger space to accumulate more crap. Now I am seeing it in an entirely new light!!!

As for paint color, now that you mention the idea of black and how it is easier to add light than subtract, it makes sense. I see it almost like building a home theater room. You want your environment as dark as possible so you can control ambient light. Then you add in your task/purpose lighting exactly where you want it. It make sense that it will be easier for me to add light when needed than constantly have to fight to try to control bounce from walls, joists and other objects in the room. If the walls are black, I can use white tile boards or panels, and white background material to purposely add reflective or bounced light as fill.

dogwood · December 8, 2009

If you shoot in a garage, keep in mind subjects will want to use the bathroom sometimes which means they will likely still need to go into your house. Also, private space to change clothes is important. And heating/cooling a garage can be an issue (it was 15 F in Portland this morning) depending on where you live.

I work out of a home studio and the catch is you have to get used to having strangers in your house. They don't want to see your toothbrush on the bathroom counter

Jeremy Winterberg · December 8, 2009

dogwood wrote:

If you shoot in a garage, keep in mind subjects will want to use the bathroom sometimes which means they will likely still need to go into your house. Also, private space to change clothes is important. And heating/cooling a garage can be an issue (it was 15 F in Portland this morning) depending on where you live.

I work out of a home studio and the catch is you have to get used to having strangers in your house. They don't want to see your toothbrush on the bathroom counter

Agreed. If your garage isn't fully insulated, you may want to consider doing that, and then drywall over that, then paint. I'm assuming it is already insulated because you are ready to paint as soon as its clean. But then again, you said you are going to wire electrical, so it may not be finished.

We added heating to our garage. a simple re-routing of one of the air vents to the garage. Doesn't heat it up a TON, but its better than nothing. And you can also use a space heater if its cold.

Me and my brother (mostly him) tore out the motor on his '90 Mustang GT when he was 16 I was 14. Winter in Wisconsin gets pretty cold in the garage. That car is a beast now that its done. Roughly 550 Horsepower. It rocks back and forth when it idles, soo much power.

Jeremy Winterberg · December 8, 2009

nvm, you're in California... Heating wont be an issue... but you can still re-route air vents for AC to the garage.

Art Scott · December 8, 2009

anonymouscuban wrote:

I am about to turn my garage into a photo studio. I don't have the exact measurements right now but it is your typical 3 car garage. First thing I have to do is clean it out. Not looking forward to that. However, I thought it better to start planning now so I can get this done right.

The garage currently has a false ceiling at about 8.5,. I plan to knock this out to expose the joist and get much more head room. What I have found while shooting in my home with 8' ceilings is that I am limited to how high I can place my lights and I also get a lot of bounced light. I am thinking that more head room is better.

I pretty much can finish it how ever I desire. From painting the walls to the floor and hanging background rods, etc. I am pretty handy so I can build pretty much anything. I can also run electrical so I plan on running various outlets so I can place my lights any where without have cord runs all over the place.

My questions are:

1. What color should I paint the walls?
2. The floor is cement. Should I paint it, if so, what color? I am thinking I should leave it and use tile boards, fabric and other props to change the flooring specific for the shot.
3. Is it better to have more room from front to back or left to right, from the perspective of the camera?
4. Is there any other question(s) I should be asking?

Thanks,
Alex

1 & 2 - FLAT BLACK......over-coated with a flat poly urethane coating

3 - 99% of all backdrops are 10-12 feet wide so all you need is 15 - 18' wide for lighting atthe max....most lighting is in front or very near subject....also I would be looking for a rail system for lights to keep them offthe floor or one 10-16 foot umbrella with a center rotating mount.......

4- I am sure there are but I cannot read your mind today...way too much ice here and it hinders my psychic abilities

rofl

barb

anonymouscuban · December 8, 2009

I live in Southern California so cold doesn't tend to be an issue here. Heat on the other hand can be but last summer, I installed an attic fan and vents in the garage and it remains pretty comfortable in there now. Worst case I can install an ac unit pretty easily.

It's an attached garage so it has direct access to my home. The nice thing is that it connects to our family room area which has a bathroom and spare bedroom and is rather isolated from the rest of the house. This is perfect because the bedroom can be used for changing and the bathroom can also be used without opening the rest of my home up to everyone. I really don't mind strangers in my home anyway, at least invited strangers. I have a Mossberg for the uninvited ones.

As for the walls, except for the common wall between the house/garage, the others will have to be finished since currently they are covered with some cheap, white-washed paneling that was installed by the previous owners. I plan to hang drywall once I run my electrical. I may install some insulation while I am at it.

The rail system intrigues me. I will have to look that up as I don't have any experience with them.

Jeremy Winterberg · December 8, 2009

Art Scott wrote:

1 & 2 - FLAT BLACK......over-coated with a flat poly urethane coating

I agree, you can always add more light, but you cannot take it away very easily. Someone else said this as well...

Jeremy Winterberg · December 8, 2009

anonymouscuban wrote:

As for the walls, except for the common wall between the house/garage, the others will have to be finished since currently they are covered with some cheap, white-washed paneling that was installed by the previous owners. I plan to hang drywall once I run my electrical. I may install some insulation while I am at it.

I would install the insulation, because it will keep the AC/Cool Air in better and if it were to get cold it would keep it warm in there. I've been to SoCal a few times, and it can get chilly at night/early morning... (I have cousins in Vista, California)

D'Buggs · December 8, 2009

MUST, MUST,,,, MUST use black. I like being able to partition off with the use of fabrics.... A white wall can be of benifit, though, but only when you want one.

anonymouscuban · December 8, 2009

D'Buggs wrote:

MUST, MUST,,,, MUST use black. I like being able to partition off with the use of fabrics.... A white wall can be of benifit, though, but only when you want one.

After thinking this through, I think the black walls is best. I can design larger white panels to set in place if needed. I can either have them on rollers or mount them to the wall easily enough.

ChatKat · December 9, 2009

Walls
I painted my studio walls 18% Grey on three sides and a white with a minute amount of pink tone to it. Ceilings are white. I am very happy with the choice.

Building a Photo Studio - Advice Please

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