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wildsam90

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Sam
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Hello!

Recently been looking to purchase Lastolite Hilite and a set of lights for a up coming job and future shoots.

I've had limited experience with 6x7ft Hilite and a mixture of elinchrom d-lites 4head kit for a few family and pet shoots.

Now the upcoming job is few carbon fiber car parts but I'm also am buying for newborns, pets and family shoots.

So my queries are two lights enough? Personally feel much more comfortable with 3 heads. Coming from a 4 head kit.

150watts? 300? 400? 600+? Is there a happy medium with out the large price tag

I have small knowledge of the professional brands any personal experience with 2/3 head kits suggestions would be great.

At this moment in time my ideal budget for the lights is £400 new or second hand.

Any words of wisdom greatly appreciated
 
You need two lights for the Hilite, but Hilites are efficient so they don't need to be very powerful (speedlites are often adequate). Plus key light and maybe one more to cover all eventualities. 200-400Ws all round is usually about right. Bear in mind that with studio work doubling the ISO also doubles the effective power of the lights in terms of exposure settings, so even 100Ws is enough for a lot of things.

Your budget for four lights is too low. There's lot of good kit around but Lencarta Smartflash is about the cheapest decent head and they're £110 each. Plus stands, triggers and light modifiers.

NB, a Hilite is not the obvious choice for carbon fibre product shots ;)
 
Hi Hoppy, Thanks for for comments!

I'm happy to spend was just expecting 1k light kit suggestions to start flying at me !

But the Lencarta really do look great for the price new!

As I've used Hilites before thought id purchase it first for shoots on the side as well and go from there!

What would you recommend? I'll be getting in the odd pair of doors, bumpers and bonnets but mainly shoots intakes ect!

Thanks again!
 
As Richard (Hoppy) says, a couple of hotshoe flashguns can be used in the HiLite, the problem is that the HiLite needs to be lit more brightly (about 0.7 stop brighter) than the front subject, which means that the studio flash heads will be on pretty low power but the hotshoe flashguns will be on full power, or somewhere near, which means that their recycling will be slow. If that will be a problem, go for studio flash in the HiLite.

NB, a Hilite is not the obvious choice for carbon fibre product shots ;)
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Richard is a master of understatement:)
 
Hi Garry, how would you go around shooting carbon?

As I would much rather have the correct lights and tools to start off with and always pick up a hilite later on.

Thanks
Sam
 
wildsam90 said:
Hi Hoppy, Thanks for for comments!

I'm happy to spend was just expecting 1k light kit suggestions to start flying at me !

But the Lencarta really do look great for the price new!

As I've used Hilites before thought id purchase it first for shoots on the side as well and go from there!

What would you recommend? I'll be getting in the odd pair of doors, bumpers and bonnets but mainly shoots intakes ect!

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Sam, with respect bud, you're sitting at the bottom of a long and steep learning curve. No worries, that's where we all started, but you're wanting to do everything from babies to families, and small product shots to much larger ones, just by buying a bunch of lights. Or at least, that's what it sounds like ;) To do all that to a professional standard requires a large studio, a lot of expensive kit well into four figures, and most important of all, a lot of knowledge and experience.

Just doing portraits with a Hilite is challenging enough for a newcomer. The usual advice around these parts is to start with just one light and basic modifiers and build from there, one step at a time. You will learn a huge amount quickly, and won't trip yourself up with multiple lights, a mess of conflicting shadows, and no knowledge of how to do things properly.

That would be my suggestion. Get one light, a medium sized softbox and reflector, stand/triggers etc. You'll be amazed at what can be done with simple kit and sound basic understanding. Practise on family and friends. Then buy extra lights and modifiers according to need, building your knowledge as you go. There are several good brands about, though Lencarta or Elinchrom would be my recommendation for tried and tested performance and value.
 
I agree with Richard that it's a bit of an uphill struggle to try to learn everything at once BUT carbon fibre products are actually pretty easy to photograph.

Think about it - the material is shiny, dense and has very interesting patterns. And it often has complex shapes that appear to be almost impossible to light - but it is in fact no different from surfaces such as stained glass, ceramics etc.

This tutorial on the Lencarta blog may help. Forget the fact that I photographed vegetables, the reason for this is that you didn't give me any of your carbon fibre products to demonstrate with:) but the principles are identical - and I only used a single light.
 
Thank you both for your replies and reading back to my original first post when I said limited experience, I had roughly 6 months shadowing another photographer covering families and dog shoots. After a job change I'm now wanting to go back into it but in my own time.

Sadly as most of my time was based around shoots I didn't get a lot of play time to try much else.

Garry your post and tutorial was brilliant and I would of never thought of reading about lighting on vegetables to answer some of my questions :D

But this does open up more questions which hopefully I won't bore you with!

As they have requested white backgrounds for all products would a white paper be more suitable to light comparing to the 2 lights I was using in the hilite?

Sadly as I won't be lighting a chopping board of vegetables does this mean I should be looking at a soft box large than 70x140? 80% of the time I will shooting smaller parts such as air in takes, engine covers and grills but with the odd door, bonnet and bumper! Which If I need a soft box 3x the size of
a bonnet god help me
 
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My advice would be to get one as big as is practical. And when you need something larger you can fake it with a silk/ bed sheet/ shower curtain / two large soft boxes banked or even a large hilite;)

And for the products a white paper or light table might be best though a hilite would still be usable for pets people and indeed as a massive soft box for bonnets.
 
Phil V said:
My advice would be to get one as big as is practical. And when you need something larger you can fake it with a silk/ bed sheet/ shower curtain / two large soft boxes banked or even a large hilite;)

And for the products a white paper or light table might be best though a hilite would still be usable for pets people and indeed as a massive soft box for bonnets.
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Hi Phil!

My thoughts so far is 3 light set up one with a 60x60 and second one being longer on one side!

If I can replicate using silk / bed sheet on the larger items I'm up for that! Shouldn't be shooting them often anyway!

Currently thinking about leaving the hilite for now and putting the extra money into the Lencarta lights if paper is practical!
 
wildsam90 said:
Thank you both for your replies and reading back to my original first post when I said limited experience, I had roughly 6 months shadowing another photographer covering families and dog shoots. After a job change I'm now wanting to go back into it but in my own time.

Sadly as most of my time was based around shoots I didn't get a lot of play time to try much else.

Garry your post and tutorial was brilliant and I would of never thought of reading about lighting on vegetables to answer some of my questions :D

But this does open up more questions which hopefully I won't bore you with!

As they have requested white backgrounds for all products would a white paper be more suitable to light comparing to the 2 lights I was using in the hilite?

Sadly as I won't be lighting a chopping board of vegetables does this mean I should be looking at a soft box large than 70x140? 80% of the time I will shooting smaller parts such as air in takes, engine covers and grills but with the odd door, bonnet and bumper! Which If I need a soft box 3x the size of
a bonnet god help me
Click to expand...
Carbon fibre has a unique (and expensive) look to it, as you know, and one of its features is its clean edges. If you use a white background then, to some extent, that clean edge will be degraded, it's inevitable.
Done really well, and with a massive amount of space between subject and background, it is possible to minimise this, but a white background will always impact on the quality to some extent - and you won't be able to have a massive amount of space between subject and background.

My advice is to shoot against a neutral or black background, then use someone like Clipping Paths Asia to cut the product out from the background, leaving you with a perfect white background but without the problems.

Just get the biggest softbox you can. Years ago, I used to shoot cars in the studio, and used an overhead softbox that was 45' long, back in the days when it wasn't practicable to do composite shots, but if I was to do that again then I would light each part of the car individually and comp a large number of images into one. Also, as Phil says, you can bodge to some extent. You can also use a polariser, which will help to some extent.

Vegetables? That's what they had in Tesco, so that's what I used:) A point that I just can't communicate properly is that lighting is about creating the right shadows in the right place, reflectivity and shape - the actual subject matter is of limited relevance.
 
Garry Edwards said:
..., as Phil says, you can bodge to some extent. You can also use a polariser, which will help to some extent.
.
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Bodge? Er, Thanks? :)

If Garry's excellent tutorial has whetted your appetite, pick up the book light science and magic. It's brilliant for understanding the relationship between surfaces and light. A bit nerdy, but I find that stuff fascinating.

I thought it was about time I let Garry pimp that tutorial, I've done it so many times I considered a custom script to link to it.
 
:LOL: I don't use "bodge" as a pejorative term, I'm the ace of bodgers - most studio photographers are.
 
Garry Edwards said:
:LOL: I don't use "bodge" as a pejorative term, I'm the ace of bodgers - most studio photographers are.
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I knew that, it made me smile. Although it might be delirium I'm smiling a lot lately and I'm up to my eyeballs.
 
I know I'm always going on about the 'value' of most online tutorials and videos, but this one takes the biscuit...

It's sort of relevant because it claims to demonstrate how to photograph carbon fibre products - If I could be bothered to sign in to youtube I'd leave a thumbsdown.
 
Cheers for bringing that up Garry was I wouldn't even thought of that until it was all here! Plus would save me time worrying about the background being lit evenly!

45! That must of been one large studio!! Or was it a simple case of bodge jobbing a sheet from one end of the studio to the other ;)

So if I'm to go down the none perfect white background wouldn't be easier to totally change the background to say green? As I would be using the magic wand in photo shop.

To be fair I understand why you chose Vegetables when such great videos like that to compete against pahaha! As a small thank you I logged in to thumbs down haha

Something I'll definitely look into Phil once I've got my self set up again :D
 
I have the Lencarta three head kit, two light boxes etc.. and very happy with it, I'm a novice but is perfectly adequate for my needs :)
 
I purchased the two light kit with a extra light and large soft box as I have a few stands about! Only had time to pull one out but definitely looking forward to testing them out when I get the time!
 
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