Studio Shoots

[Kryptix]

I've seen a few people on here build a little 'studio' in a shed. I have a spare room in my house and I want to build a little studio so I can offer portrait shots with white backgrounds like you see done professionally.

Can you tell me where I'd get the white background that I have to lay down please?

Also, I'm on a budget -- what sort of lighting would be good for a amateur? Nothing amazing, I simply can't afford it. I just want to be able to get this (I borrowed BOW's images):

...which uses this light setup:

Thing is, I have NO experience with lighting. I just want something cheap and cheerful which will achieve the above effect for me to practise.

Can anyone assist me and point me in the right direction? There's literally thousands of lighting options and it's gunna be very difficult to pick out.

Luke

 

[specialman]

I know at work we get ours from calumet. We usually get 3x10m backdrops I think.

Look at the setups from Jessops - Bowens, Portaflash or Interfit ones can be quite cheap. This is kind of what we se. Basic but good enoigh by far for home studio.

Otherwise, why not get a couple of flashes (like Nikon SB26s) for about £50 a piece that can be set on manual and fired via a cheapo trigger set (like the ones off ebay) or via a PC cord. Of course, you'd be shooting on manual but that's no hassle. Shop around for the wireless ebay triggers and don't worry that it says they works with camera 'X' - they work with anything.

The good thing about flashes like the SB26 is they have a manual mode AND an optical slave so you can trigger them via the built-in flash on your 450D. Canon alternatives are the 550EX, which is more expensive but good.

I use a SB800 on my Nikon D200 and this fires a SB26 via an optical slave. Works a treat

 

[Kryptix]

I was thinking I could just have a bright lamp that is permanently on?

Is that not possible?

 

[specialman]

Just set your WB to tungsten (or whatever temp the lamp is) or shoot in raw so you can easily correct. Main problem with a fixed power light like a lamp is there's no control over balancing the light correctly between foreground and background. I've shot stuff just using a table lamp and got good shots but you'll generally find you'll get lower shutter speeds than with a high power flash head.

 

[specialman]

I shot this just lighting it with a table lamp. The light trails are from a mini Maglite with the cowling removed. This is about 10 shots comped together to get the light trails in position. Think the exposures were about four seconds to give me enough time to do the light trails.

 

[Kryptix]

That's another thing, why can't I see any shadows on pictures like this when they're using bright lights in front of the subject?

 

[HoppyUK]

That's another thing, why can't I see any shadows on pictures like this when they're using bright lights in front of the subject?

There are no shadows because there are two lighting set ups - one for the model, and one for the background making sure that it is fractionally brighter so it just blows to pure white.

You can get away with head and shoulders stuff indoors okay, using just one or two lights, but you very quickly run out of space with full length. For that you need a 9ft/3m background and stands, at least two lights and perhaps four, with brollies (or bigger) to give that soft look you're after.

You tend to need both a lot of floor space and also more ceiling height than you get in the average room. You'll need a heck of a big shed