Indoor studio background and lighting (budget)

Justin1971

Justin1971

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Justin
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I'm getting a few people asking for portraits lately and I will soon have a spare bedroom to convert into an office/studio (when my step-daughter moves out lol).

I'm thinking of getting a background stand with (at least) white and black backgrounds (not bothered about green), with a couple of soft boxes and an umbrella.

I've seen kits on ebay and amazon for around £100-£150 (which is about my budget for the moment) but have my doubts on quality, I understand you get what you pay for.
Has anyone used or use one of these kits and how good are they?

If anyone can recommend any other equipment I would be eternally grateful...
They will be required for various portraits (including standing) so would need to be fairly high with a longish trail - I reckon a 7ft high stand with 2X3m cloth would suffice.

Budget is max £200 and I would like it to be portable so I can take it to peoples houses.

Thanks in advance
Justin
 
I bought a portable kit for £70 delivered http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Photograp...graphy_StudioEquipment_RL&hash=item485d9ef29d, this included stands, cross bar and 2 x 3m x 4m muslin cloths white and black. all in a carry case. i was and still am overly impressed with the quality for the price, however as this is needed to be portable its essential for me to use fabric. as you are setting a studio up at home im assuming it doesnt need to be portable, so to cut down costs have you thought about getting a paper roll ( as wide as you can go) and supporting it on somthing like a curtain rail? you can have make it so that there are a couple of poles with each background colours that you like, also these will be more or less flush to the wall so will in turn create more space for you and you wont have to worry too mush about lighting it as much as you would fabric as you wont have the inherant creases to over expose.
in terms of lighting i use 3 speedlites which again for me ( at the moment) is sufficiant even with a 3meter wide back drop. i dont know too much about dedicated studio lighting yet so i cant help you with that at the moment but i hope that my input as help you anyway....
 
Justin1971 said:
I'm getting a few people asking for portraits lately and I will soon have a spare bedroom to convert into an office/studio (when my step-daughter moves out lol).

I'm thinking of getting a background stand with (at least) white and black backgrounds (not bothered about green), with a couple of soft boxes and an umbrella.

I've seen kits on ebay and amazon for around £100-£150 (which is about my budget for the moment) but have my doubts on quality, I understand you get what you pay for.
Has anyone used or use one of these kits and how good are they?

If anyone can recommend any other equipment I would be eternally grateful...
They will be required for various portraits (including standing) so would need to be fairly high with a longish trail - I reckon a 7ft high stand with 2X3m cloth would suffice.

Budget is max £200 and I would like it to be portable so I can take it to peoples houses.

Thanks in advance
Justin
Click to expand...

There are a lot of similar posts in the Lighting forum. Have a look there and scroll down a few pages, run a search :thumbs:

The general consensus is that those cheap e-bay type kits are not the way forward for serious studio work and you'd be better off with one decent quality light (eg Lencarta Smartflash) that is a lot more versatile than you might think. Learn to use that properly, then add extra lights, different modifiers and techniques as you progress. Less is more with lighting; if you start off with maybe three lights and no experience, you'll end up in a mess with ratios all over the place and conflicting shadows that look bad.

If you have mains power, then studio heads beat hot-shoe guns every time - they have modelling lights so you can see what's what and recycle fast :)

Edit: a one head kit and stand etc can be had for £200.
 
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