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Studio lighting - where to start
Nikolai
Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
Got this PM message, decided to answer here...
If that's your current state of mind I truly recommend to postpone the purchase. As Shay Stephens once said to me few years ago, when I was pretty much in your shoes lighting-wise, "the studio lighting is expensive and complicated".
I was trying to build up a $500 kit, and each time I ended up in a half-baked one. You can start with one light (AB800), one stand and one umbrella, of course. I had used much weaker solution for a year, so it's not too bad. But there is a better way, I think.
My sincere recommmendation to you is to spend a lot of time on reading on the stuff. Maybe get to the bookstore/library and read. Yes, $500 will get you one good light, or a couple of decent ones (with no modifiers). But if you don't know what to do with it, it's not really much. Try to find some local place that would rent lights to you. Or maybe find some studio that would do hourly renting. Then find somebody who can show/teach you how to use it. You'll be far better off spending those $500 on educating yourself on how to use the lights rahter than buying just one ggod light (or, worse yet, several bad ones) and having no idea what to do with them.
I know it's probably not what you wanted to hear, but that's what I honestly think.
HTH and good luck!
I don't think 1 would be enough. I'm not familiar with proper lighting so all that stuff is Chinese to me. I don't know what umbrella would fit, or where to even look. LoL. If you can, I know you are very busy, please send me a link, or links to everything that I need to order. Then recommend how many units I would need.
I know it's a lot to ask, but I was just about to waste 500 dollars on some make shift kit, when I should be getting the pro stuff.
If that's your current state of mind I truly recommend to postpone the purchase. As Shay Stephens once said to me few years ago, when I was pretty much in your shoes lighting-wise, "the studio lighting is expensive and complicated".
I was trying to build up a $500 kit, and each time I ended up in a half-baked one. You can start with one light (AB800), one stand and one umbrella, of course. I had used much weaker solution for a year, so it's not too bad. But there is a better way, I think.
My sincere recommmendation to you is to spend a lot of time on reading on the stuff. Maybe get to the bookstore/library and read. Yes, $500 will get you one good light, or a couple of decent ones (with no modifiers). But if you don't know what to do with it, it's not really much. Try to find some local place that would rent lights to you. Or maybe find some studio that would do hourly renting. Then find somebody who can show/teach you how to use it. You'll be far better off spending those $500 on educating yourself on how to use the lights rahter than buying just one ggod light (or, worse yet, several bad ones) and having no idea what to do with them.
I know it's probably not what you wanted to hear, but that's what I honestly think.
HTH and good luck!
"May the f/stop be with you!"
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Thanks Nikolai. Atleast I know where to start now. ;-)
You'll see, in a few months you'll be so proud of me. And you'll have no one to give a pat on the back for my progress, but yourself. If I find anything usefull, I'll send you a link so that you can post for the community.
Thanks again.
Nikon Shooter
It's all about the moment...
Shay used to say, start with one light and learn to use it well, before adding more lights. I think it is still pretty good advice today.
Use a reflector for your second light to begin with.
Spend some time reading on the Strobist This forum is packed with great information for learning to use small speedlites. If you can use these well, larger studio strobes are duck soup. Then post some of your shots on the Technique forum here on dgrin and lots of folks will give you more free advice
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Pathfinder and I think Nik both have the Canon EST to remotely fire off the flashes. This allows for more creative options.
Studio lights are simply an extension of that (but completely shot in manual mode) then a whole new world and learning curve presents itself. Learning about ratios, light placement, flags, bookends...the list goes on. To simply light up an individual or two, a simple TTL flashgun on camera is more that sufficient and with some addtional triggers, moved on to a stand with a diffuser (umbrella, scrim, shower curtain....lots of options). Make yourself a better bounce card and play around...shoot in manual and discover the differences as you slow/speed the shutter.
Also use the flash in manual mode.....start with 1/4 power and work up and down from there. One of my favorite sites:
http://planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/
NAPP Member | Canon Shooter
Weddings/Portraits and anything else that catches my eye.
www.daveswartz.com
Model Mayhem site http://www.modelmayhem.com/686552
David, while what you said makes a lot os sense, I respectfully disagree on one important point.
No matter how you good you get with the on camera-flash (be it built-in or dedicated) it doesn't help a single tiny iota on your way to studio lighting.
You must get your flash off your camera, be it a cord or a some sort of remote (FWIW, I use Pocket Wizards for my 580EXII if I use it off-camera at all). Then it's a brave new world:-)
True NIk....I guess my point was and still is...the most important thing to learn is how the relationships between flash, ambient, shutter, ISO, aperture work together in Manual mode.....then when placing light off camera it makes sense.
NAPP Member | Canon Shooter
Weddings/Portraits and anything else that catches my eye.
www.daveswartz.com
Model Mayhem site http://www.modelmayhem.com/686552
So then of course when you add off camera lighting and the whole 3D studio space, thus making what used to be a modest "picture plain" the whole polydimensional simplex... then the real fun begins :-)
Many people recommend against getting flash meters these days, but I personally found that I learned a great deal about lighting and lighting ratios after picking up a good quality Sekonic and carrying it around with me for a week or so.
As to what equiptment to buy, it really depends on what kind of shooting you intend to do. Starting with just one light is great for on location lighting where your primary plan is to augment the ambient light. Mixing a single off camera strobe with ambient is really the heart of the strobist movement and is a fantastic skill to learn for general photography.
That said, if your goal is studio lighting rather than on location lighting, then using just one light is going to be tough. Most of my studio light setups use 3 lights and some use 4. However, before you commit to picking up a studio lighting setup you have an even bigger issue to face: studio space. A good studio requires quite a bit of depth. Minimally I like 6 feet of space both in front of and behind my model and in reality room which is only 12 feet on its long axis is going to feel really cramped and limiting.
As for using reflectors for fill, you can go that route but I am hesitant to recommend that as a way to start because I think it is better as a beginner to learn how to light ground up rather than top down. What I mean by "ground up" is this: first set your fill light and measure it. Say it comes out to f/5.6. Then decide your ratio; if you want your fill to be 1 stop under then you know your final exposure should be f/8 so you bring your main up until the meter reads f/8 and you are good to go. I find that lighting "top down" where you set your main light first and then bring in the fill to involve a lot more fiddling and to be less consistant becase the fill affects the exposure where it combines with the main.
Using a reflector for fill works, but it is a top down workflow so it doesn't translate well when you move to multiple light setups. The other issue with reflectors for fill is that you really want a big reflector. I use a 4'x8' sheet of foam core cut in half as V-flat which works reasonably well but takes up a lot of space.
As for what to get:
If you have the money, the space and you really want to get into studio lighting, pick up 3 mono lights (say AB800s) with stands and a small collection of modifiers (ask and I'll give you a more detailed list). I recommend picking up Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers by Chistopher Grey as good general book on studio portrait lighting.
If you just want to get your feet wet in off camera lighting or you don't have a good studio space, go the strobist route because battery powered location lighting is key. The Lighting 101 is the best starting point and it will give you a pretty good overview of what gear you need.
I totally
I also on the same page about building the light from ground up, i.e. start
with fill and adjust the accents last.
Reflector-wise: I think it's a very nice, cheap and easy to understand alternative to an extra light. You can make it DIY or buy 5-in-1, they are not that expenisve (albeit add holder and you'll get into hundreds fast).
And I totally dig the shooting space remark. I'm lucky to have 22' long 22' living room-converted-to studio, and even at that I often has to resort to a shorter-than-I'd-like-it-to-be focal length, since I simply can't fit 5'10" model wearing 4" heels into 70mm frame on top of APC x1.6 factor (but once I get that 5DMkII with its FF sensor - then it's gonna be a whole different ballgame:-)
Anyway... It's a lot of fun!
You can get by with out a light meter if you have done it several hundred times before but when you are just starting out? I don't recommend it.
The light meter and bottom up lighting give me 100% reproducible ratios. Say I am doing Rembrant lighting with my medium softbox; I can test out lighting ratios from 1/3 stop up to 2 stops in 1/3 stop increments and see what they look like both on screen and in print before I get a paying gig. Then when I am on the dime and I have to get it right, I can decide I want 1 1/3 stops, hit it dead on with no messing around and have complete confidence that it will print well.
Disc style reflectors are great; I have several. However I rarely use them for fill anymore. This may just be an issue of personal taste, but I want my fill to fill everything evenly. The light from disc reflector placed to the side of the model is fairly directional and leaves visible shadows which result in a couple of issues in the image: hot spots lit by both the main and fill and dark spots lit by neither. These days my favorite source for fill is a 60" shoot-through umbrella placed as close to the lens axis as I can get it and, if I had more lights, I'd use two of them, one on each side.
I only have about 15' worth of throw to play with and on the 5D I shoot head shots at 135mm, head and shoulders at 85mm, sitting shots at 50mm and standing shots at 35mm (give or take; that's a staring point not a rule). That's a style thing; I like the model relatively close to the camera and as far as possible from the background so when I use a zoom (mostly I shoot with primes) in the studio its almost always the 24-105.
Yes indeedy.
but a light meter can keep you from pulling out all of your hair in difficult lighting situations....some of the sekonics' I looked at in the last couple of days and
I have been using a meter for over 30 yrs and it has saved me a ton of hair pulling, as I had tried to use a tape measure and calculator for figuring out lighting.....I almost always have a meter (incident flash-ambient) in one of my bags......do not waste money on a flash meter only or an ambient meter only....most of the moden flash meters will measure ambient light along with the flash in one fell swoope..................
Another thing to look at when buying a flash meter is the power range. Cheap meters do not work well at low power levels and often cannot be used for balancing flash and ambient because the ambient light level is too low.
Some of the inexpensive meters on the market claim to be accurate to +- 1/3rd stop, but some tests seem to indicate they are really only accurate to about +- 1/2 stop.
While that doesn't sound too bad, if you measure a light with +- 1/2 stop accuracy and it measures 1/2 stop too low, and you measure another light and it measures 1/2 stop too high, suddenly you are faced with an error in 2 lights of a full stop. If you have flashes that don't have good repeatability, the cheap meter may yield less than useful results.
The moral, don't get cheap electronic flashes that are not at least repeatable output at a given setting and don't get a cheap meter because the results may not be worth the effort.
I tested my electronic flash, both studio monolights and speedlights, against a Gossen Luna-Pro F meter which I tested against a Minolta Auto Meter III F (I think, it wasn't mine). I found that I could get accurate and repeatable results that I could then corroborate with the digital camera and a gray target.
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
Yes CHEAP IS BAD.....inexpensive on the other hand is good.....Gossen and Sekonic are both great meters,,,,,,minolta made great meters.....I use a Minolta lll F currently (mostly and sometimes a Shepard FM1000, Now they are Polaris meters...still a decent inexpensive meter.....NOT CHEAP tho)
Before I purchase any strobes, I think I'll be needing the powerful flash unit first(ie SB800 for Nikon dSLRS).
It'll take me a few monhts to gather all this coin, and then I'm looking around, and I might not have the space to confortably shoot 'studio style' photography. I'm going to throw everything that I have in the living room out tongith! hahaha!
Now, a nice little checklist would be very handy. Nikolai recommended to avoid garbage light kits and invest in something that will work and last. In your expertise, if you would be so kind as to hand over that detailed list, I would be forever in your debt.
My living room, in it's widest must be atleast 25-30 by 15 feet. So long living room! Woohoo!
Nikon Shooter
It's all about the moment...
I am swamped at the moment, but I'll put together a gear list on my blog at some point. Personally I focus on portraits in my studio and that guides my choice in gear; if you are interested in full body shots, Nik has much more experience.
Sweet, I'll be looking forward to it. And don't mind the application. The check list you will provide will be a reference so that I can purchase what I need.
Thanks in advance.
Nikon Shooter
It's all about the moment...
Are you wanting to use studio strobes or are you looking to go with dedicated Nikon Strobes, ie the SB800.....the SB800 being bttery powered doesnot have a modeling light and studio strobes do have......you can use the SB800 in studio but I really like having the modeling lights so I can see where shadows and highlights will be.................
As for a list.....what do you have in the way of gear now.....in the past my set up was:
2-camera bodies
1-24-70 f2.8 lens
1-70-210 f2.8 lens
4- studio strobes {Mono Lights} (Paul C Buff White Lightning 5000's)
(now 5 - WL5000's)
3- Sunpak 622 supers {up for sale on Flea Market)
2- slave triggers for the 622's (have upgraded to 5ea 16 channel radio slaves for both studio strobes and dedicated shoe or sunpak 622 strobes
1-Shepard FM1000 light meter and a Minolta lll F meter
4-10' light stands
2-diy 3# coffee can+ concrete background light stands (total height 18")
2-z frames for holding colored gels for coloring background
2- 48" white umbrella (upgraded to 2 Paul Buff Brolley boxes)
1-Stroboframe RL2000 flash bracket.....used even when I did not have a flash attached to for rotating between vert and horizontal shots
Started out with Savage roll paper background (Thunder Grey and then black)....hated the paper so I have been using only a black Muslin back ground ever since....cahnging its looks with geled back lights...so in esscence I have a nearly unlimited amount of backgrounds..........
I got to the point i was carrying at least 2 studio strobes for shooting the wedding groups and intimates.........
That is pretty much my list of studio lighting
Jesus Christ Art. That's alot of stuff. I went ahead and picked up an SB 600 this week. It was cool and all, then I got turned on by the multiple flash set up, and it reminded me about Nikolai telling me I could also go the strobist route. Turns out that the SB 600 can only work as a slave. So I purchased an SB 800 last night. Now I have two lights! (Well, Three if you count the on camera flash. lol)
I very well intend on gettting atleast 4 lights for my home studio, but each set up is expensive. I want to get good with these strobes first , to get a good foundation on light direction, position and quality. Then I'll make the dive and pick up the AB800's with all the bells and whitsles.
I've set a budget for photography, and I vowed not to invest more than 500 bucks, I'm already at 550+ this month. LoL. By March, I'll have all of my studio lights and my D300.
Nikon Shooter
It's all about the moment...