Advice on lighting equipment

wr_uk

wr_uk

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Wayne
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Hi, Im not a photographer by trade but as an artist for 20yrs i've occasionally took the odd shot for work. Im now a Venetian Plasterer and I wanting to have a small setup so I can take some good quality staged photos of my samples in order to generate some work. I'm currently taking shot with a bog standard spot light or whatever I can get my hands on. Some of the shots I took can be seen here under venetianplaster on instagram. These shot were just taken with iphone 5 then I do a bit of color correction in photoshop. I'm wanting to get some nice soft lighting and shadowing but not sure exactly what I need to get. I was thinking something along the lines of a cheap Softbox Continuous Lighting Stand kit which you can pick up on ebay for around £40.

Any advice on light setup & equipment i need to be looking for?

Thanks

Wayne
 
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Hi, no try replacing firencolor/hl=en with venetianplasterwork/ . I cant put a link in until I have 3 + posts...seem to be the forums rules
 
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Also what kind of wattage should I be looking for and ho many bulbs per softbox?
 
You seem to be producing some very good work, and it deserves to be lit well, because the shots you produce are going to be your shop window....

Continuous lighting is perfectly adequate for this, although flash is better for most things.

What you need is a softbox from one side, skimming across the surface of the subject (which in this case is the wall of course), this will reveal the texture. This light needs to be as far away as possible from the part of the wall that you're photographing. What you need to do is to create the right shadows in the right places. The soft lighting that you think you want is in fact exactly what you don't want..

Your best bet is a twin head kit, this one seems pretty good. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2800W-Twi...572142?hash=item43f95f296e:g:~BkAAOSwNRdYBQm4 There are cheaper ones available or course, but there's no point in buying junk.
The second light will be very close to your camera, usually right behind it, and it's job is to fill in the shadows to the point where they don't look too strong, so the power on this light needs to be turned down to suit, and on some types of finish it may not even be needed at all. Where there are props included, e.g. kitchen things, the second light will also light the props.
wr_uk said:
Also what kind of wattage should I be looking for and ho many bulbs per softbox?
Click to expand...
Wattage doesn't matter, the subject isn't going to move so as long as the camera is on a sturdy stand, low power will make no difference.
How many bulbs does matter to some extent, because if there is only one bulb you can't reduce the power. If you have say 4 bulbs you can either turn two off, or leave them all on but unscrew one, two or 3 the adjust the power.

Hope that helps.
 
Thanks for the advice Gary much appreciated. The second light I assume is a second softbox right. Didnt know the power could be turned down on softboxes is this the case for most in not all softboxes?
 
wr_uk said:
Thanks for the advice Gary much appreciated. The second light I assume is a second softbox right. Didnt know the power could be turned down on softboxes is this the case for most in not all softboxes?
Click to expand...
The one that will be doing most of the work needs to be a softbox, this is the one that will be off to the left or right (or from the top or the bottom) at an extreme angle to create the shadows you need - whichever angle of light suits the relief. The jargon term for the light that does most of the work is the key light, or main light.
The second light is a fill light in this case and as I said before, the natural place for this to go is just about where the camera is, and the best place is usually just behind the camera. This then creates fill lighting that reduces the depth of the shadows to suit your needs, and needs to be lower power than the key light. And as the key light needs to be quite a long way away and is also at an acute angle, the fill light needs to be at much lower power.

Some of the cheap continuous lighting kits only have one bulb per unit and the power cannot be adjusted, which is why you need kits with several bulbs in each unit. If you bought flash instead it would be much more adjustable but would also cost more, and won't work with your iphone.
The fill light doesn't need to be a softbox, but can be, it just doesn't matter. The reality though is that these kits are always sold with softboxes because the public like them and think that they need them.
 
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