£225 what would you buy..

AndyG123 said:
After a bit more looking I'm thinking of getting a few bits what will be beneficial for me around the home for my son...
Looking into a set of 3 backdrops with stands. (white green black)
A five in one reflector.
A neewer 1.2m octagonal diffuser.
Another speedlight (I'm using the cheaper manual neewer 560 been playing the last day indoors and quite enjoying using it. Didn't realize how much is to be learnt with lighting)
And an. Umbrella holder bracket.

Going to look for a book on flash photography aswel and portrait photography.. Been watching a lot of videos from Zack Arias and found I quite informative. All comes to just over £100 and I dare say will give me a lot more opportunity to shoot having improved lighting in my home. As a lot of you have mentioned buying a lens isn't really going to give me more Opportunity to shoot subjects.

If anyone can recommend a good book I would appreciate that.
Thanks.
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The hotshoe diaries
The Speedlighters handbook

(If you put a wanted ad up, someone might offer you a bargain)

You’re not going to be able to create a clean white background shot, it takes space and at least 3 lights to do it anything close to well (it probably won’t stop you trying, then getting upset when the results aren’t good enough). Those cheap background kits are complete junk :)

If you’re thinking of creating a ‘home studio’ then you’ll need softboxes, brollies and decent stands (better quality avoids frustration). I know this is no help to you right now but I always decorate so that I don’t need to put up a background. Backgrounds eat space and don’t offer a good enough return on investment of that space (for me).

You do have a bunch of very different aims though, if you really want to shoot portraits, you need a short fast telephoto (85 1.8 would be perfect), but you also want to shoot macro and Astro, which require 2 different fairly specialist lenses and a tripod.

Just sticking to getting decent shots of your son, I’d get an 85mm and a simple pop up softbox to use with a speedlight (chuck in a reflector), that’ll give you indoors and outdoors options.

You’re just at the point of discovering that whilst a ‘half decent shot’ is fairly easy to achieve, improving on that takes a lot of work and learning and some investment.
 
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Phil V said:
if you really want to shoot portraits, you need a short fast telephoto (85 1.8 would be perfect)
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How would this be on the 1.5 crop Would It not be too long for indoor portraits?

Yeah I know what your on about trying to white the backgrounds out. I found myself getting the white background on one of my walls in my home with backlighting then it was bouncing back and seemed to overexpose my subject (a micky mouse toy in this case)
 
AndyG123 said:
How would this be on the 1.5 crop Would It not be too long for indoor portraits?

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Some people would say it’s too long, I’d say it’s perfect.
As an all round tool for portraits, it’s a favourite of many, but some people can’t make it work for them. I’ve no idea how big your rooms are or what you want to achieve. But I’ve never liked a 50 or 55 on crop for portraits (not long enough to be flattering).
 
AndyG123 said:
Its not just long exposures. It's little things like even shooting at 1/100th or 1/200th with a flash. focusing dead center on an eye (or a piece of fruit or anything) it still doesn'g give a full crisp shot. Even with iso 100 it pin sharp. I've tried this with a tripod, with handheld and remote shutter for testing purposes. I know everything can cause vibrations from the mirror moving to finger presses etc.. But wouldn't expect it in a controlled environment so to speak (indoors with tripod on lowest level with a weight underneath etc..)
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Can you post some examples?
 
That's using on camera flash with ttl. (taken before I had off camera flash.
 
AndyG123 said:
That's using on camera flash with ttl. (taken before I had off camera flash.
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I’ve added some detail on the image thread, but the likely reason they were in sharp was the low SS. you were exposing for the ambient then adding flash.
For ‘studio’ type shots, you should use M and ensure the flash overpowers the ambient (use sync speed and a low iso).
 
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