Backgrounds and lighting for home studio?

CaveDweller

CaveDweller

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Well not exactly for a home studio, just something to use when I want to do some portraits now and again and preferably some full body ones. I have a budget of about £400 but I don't really want to spend more than £100 (will pay more if I have to), as the £400 budget is to buy a few other goodies as well. I will be setting it up in a tiny box room about 4x4metres (not ideal I know). I do like the look of the Lastolite Hilite Background but for a 6x7ft one that's my £400 budget nearly gone and also I wouldn't be able to get full body shots as you would see the floor. I was even thinking of the Lastolite collapsible reversible background but I would have the same problem for full body and baby shots on the floor, but it's an ok price at £139. Now that I'm writing all this, a paper roll seems more suitable but to be honest I'm after something a bit more longer lasting and reusable. I just can't decide lol.

Also I have 2 off camera flashes with stands and shoot through brollies. Will these be ok for simple portraits or will I be best getting something else for different effects?

If anyone could give me any pointers towards what you would use regarding the background and brollies (or soft boxes, etc) it would be much appreciated.
 
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You could do a lot with the following:

Background stands / crossbar £50
White seamless paper roll 2.72m x 11m £50 (or £110 for 25m long)
Piece of white hardboard from B&Q £10 (to go on the floor below your subject)
5 in 1 reflectors of various sizes £30
Softbox £35
Beauty dish £36
Gel pack for the speedlites £5
A few bags of 1 - 2kg rice to weight down the stand £2 - £4 depending on how many

Additional strobes would give you more options (4 light setups), go for a budget YN units with an optical slave function, maybe £40 ea.

Have a good read here for some examples what you can do : http://www.zarias.com/white-seamless-tutorial-part-1-gear-space/
 
Cheers. I was thinking of getting 2 rolls of paper, a black and a white one. I don't know if I'm that keen on the grey, I will have to have a look round for some examples. Everything you listed there I was planning getting with the rest of my budget, apart from the beauty dish I don't know what that is lol. Will have a look now:thumbs: I already have a reflector but it's only a 33inch one so I'd probably need a bigger one.
 
Grey paper can be made black or white (or any other colour with care) black and white are ... erm black or white.

That's why grey is recommended.
 
Phil V said:
Grey paper can be made black or white (or any other colour with care) black and white are ... erm black or white.

That's why grey is recommended.
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Would you recommend a grey one over black or white? Also would it be easy enough to light up the grey backdrop with only one flash with a softbox and the other on my subject with a shoot through brollie? I don't know wether to get more flashes than the two I have and whether I should change my 2 brollies for softboxes lol. I'm not working in the biggest of rooms.
 
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Start with your subject lighting, in a small room, you can do nothing subtle with brollies, there's far too much spilled light.

You can do 'interesting' things with one background light, only you know what 'look' you want. So you need to work out what kind of lighting from there (how many, what modifiers). Sorry that doesn't seem helpful, but you can do tons with one light and a selection of different modifiers, but you're restricted to what you can do well with 4 lights and brollies, I hope the penny is dropping.

Your photos will be defined by your lighting and composition, your lighting control comes in the form of modifiers. Add in reflectors and flags and you're building a toolkit.

I'd personally go for grey first, both black and white will work better in a larger space, and like I said, grey can become black or white if you treat it right.
 
Agreed with Phil regarding the background. White as well as grey can go from white all the way to black, black is black not much room for play.

One reason i'd personally go white on the background is to use some gels on the background strobe(s), it can become any colour you have a gel for! Or if you have two strobes have a different gel on each to really pop off some interesting colours behind your subject. It does depend on what you want from the final image.

Useful video :

And use Google images and search for beauty dish to give you an idea of the look it can create, has an interesting light quality / fall off and very cool catch lights in eyes (more so than a large softbox imo).
 
Thanks for the tips. I have a lot to think about now and to read up on. Can't wait to get it all sorted out:thumbs:

Edit: would a single flash with a soft box light up the grey quite evenly or will it give that halo effect like in the video?...cheers
 
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CaveDweller said:
Edit: would a single flash with a soft box light up the grey quite evenly or will it give that halo effect like in the video?...cheers
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To a degree yes. the reason for the halo effect in the video is down to the use of the grid over the second light which focuses the beam into a narrower area
 
stupar said:
To a degree yes. the reason for the halo effect in the video is down to the use of the grid over the second light which focuses the beam into a narrower area
Click to expand...

Just watched it again, I missed that bit about the grid before. Hopefully I can get away with running 3 flashes off my one RF603 trigger.
 
Sharky said:
Agreed with Phil regarding the background. White as well as grey can go from white all the way to black, black is black not much room for play.

One reason i'd personally go white on the background is to use some gels on the background strobe(s), it can become any colour you have a gel for! Or if you have two strobes have a different gel on each to really pop off some interesting colours behind your subject. It does depend on what you want from the final image.
...
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Just a little more info on this, with white you can't gel to get a deep coloured background, you need grey / black for that.
 
Sharky said:
Good shout :thumbs:, white bg won't go as deep in colour as firing into a grey bg.

http://www.prophotonut.com/2009/12/...l-collection-colour-chart-and-picture-sample/
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I'd love to get it looking like that but with the space I will be working in it will be hard not to spill light onto the backdrop. Oh well...I'll cross that hurdle when it comes to it, I like a challenge:thumbs:. I'll just have to do the best I can and a lot of trial and error with moving the lights around and clever work with reflectors. The room is ok just for normal portraits but making the background a different colour is going to be a challenge. I could do it like in the video with a softbox above the subject, but those stands are expensive and I'd have to take something off my list for the budget.
 
CaveDweller said:
I'd love to get it looking like that but with the space I will be working in it will be hard not to spill light onto the backdrop. Oh well...I'll cross that hurdle when it comes to it, I like a challenge:thumbs:. I'll just have to do the best I can and a lot of trial and error with moving the lights around and clever work with reflectors. The room is ok just for normal portraits but making the background a different colour is going to be a challenge. I could do it like in the video with a softbox above the subject, but those stands are expensive and I'd have to take something off my list for the budget.
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With a softbox you shouldn't have to worry about light spilling on to the background. You can feather the light across your subject so it only goes where you want it, it's not like the flood of light from an umbrella. You could also add a grid to a softbox to further tighten where light will fall but if budget doesn't allow for one it's not the end of the world.

Trial and error is key, when i first did my home setup i bought a hair dressers head (£15) from ebay to practice setups with to see how the light worked. Saved annoying the hell out of my family to test and play with lighting and positions. Simple put that on to a light stand and experiment, any setup that i liked and thought would work well i jotted down for later reference. It was very useful to apply what i'd read / watched.

You can do an awful lot with just one light + softbox and a few reflectors. If you don't have extra pairs of hands for the reflectors get some more lightstands (£17 or so for a reasonable one that doesn't break the bank but holds more than a feather) and a reflector holder arm (£20). Adding more lights just gives you more choices and control.

I just take photos of my family and my 'biggest' lighting setup is a 4 light setup, 2 on the backdrop, 1 key light, 1 hair light (a snoot/grid speedlite high on a stand pointing down) + a reflector or two to bounce light back into the shadows. If i want some more dramatic it'll be one light. Depends upon the final look i want.
 
Sharky said:
With a softbox you shouldn't have to worry about light spilling on to the background. You can feather the light across your subject so it only goes where you want it, it's not like the flood of light from an umbrella. You could also add a grid to a softbox to further tighten where light will fall but if budget doesn't allow for one it's not the end of the world.

Trial and error is key, when i first did my home setup i bought a hair dressers head (£15) from ebay to practice setups with to see how the light worked. Saved annoying the hell out of my family to test and play with lighting and positions. Simple put that on to a light stand and experiment, any setup that i liked and thought would work well i jotted down for later reference. It was very useful to apply what i'd read / watched.

You can do an awful lot with just one light + softbox and a few reflectors. If you don't have extra pairs of hands for the reflectors get some more lightstands (£17 or so for a reasonable one that doesn't break the bank but holds more than a feather) and a reflector holder arm (£20). Adding more lights just gives you more choices and control.

I just take photos of my family and my 'biggest' lighting setup is a 4 light setup, 2 on the backdrop, 1 key light, 1 hair light (a snoot/grid speedlite high on a stand pointing down) + a reflector or two to bounce light back into the shadows. If i want some more dramatic it'll be one light. Depends upon the final look i want.
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Yeh I think my biggest problem just now is that I was trying to get and work out too much at once lol. I've ordered some softboxes to replace my brollies, a couple stands with booms, reflectors, roll of grey paper and a few other tiny bits. Oh and an LED Lenser stick but that's not for portraits lol. I will see how I get one when it all arrives and if I need extra stuff I still have some of the budget left. But as you said it's trial and error, so I will just have to have a good play around one day and try one thing at a time:thumbs:
 
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jonneymendoza said:
Are their any particular brands to get for background and stands?
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I had a cheap set off eBay to start with and they weren't very stable, especially with a heavy role of paper up high in the air. It would only have been a matter of time before it got knocked over.
After that I bought the wex heavy duty one, think it was about £100 but it's way more stable, plus it came with a nice storage bag.
Like most things, you get what you pay for!
 
I use a pair of PA stands, cheaper and much more stable than most (if not all) background stands.
 
I've used the calumet background stands which cost £100. their heavy duty and happily support a 3m wide roll of paper/vinyl
 
Personally I love the lastolite backgrounds, we use them all the time and love them, price wise yes they are a little on the extreme side but for back lighting of a subject and it looking none existant there if you want pure white they are superb.
 
I'm by no means an expert

But would a lastolite collapsible with a train not be handy :-)
 
jonneymendoza said:
Are their any particular brands to get for background and stands?
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You can get good stands and cross pole from ebay for less than £50. Don't get one of the cheap kits that have thin stands and slot in cross poles, they won't last long. The kit and seller i got mine from is no more but item 121182876540 is the same, £44 (*the auction has nothing to do with me!). If you look in the item pics you can see how much chunky the kits is vs the really cheap ones and i've no complains with mine.
 
Sharky said:
You can get good stands and cross pole from ebay for less than £50. Don't get one of the cheap kits that have thin stands and slot in cross poles, they won't last long. The kit and seller i got mine from is no more but item 121182876540 is the same, £44 (*the auction has nothing to do with me!). If you look in the item pics you can see how much chunky the kits is vs the really cheap ones and i've no complains with mine.
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Well I've just ordered a set, its only £27 for both stands and a crossbar! Hopefully they're good!
 
SirSir.... Lastolite with train
You can get one secondhand for about £100...
That leaves £300 out of the budget
 
gothgirl said:
SirSir.... Lastolite with train
You can get one secondhand for about £100...
That leaves £300 out of the budget
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I think there was an assumption for a hi-lite, rather than the old lastolite double sided flat panel.
 
Plain painted wall, silver brolly, portrait done. In a room about the same size.

One light and a plain wall is just about my favourite setup (and one of the most versatile too!).

6935091301_e89a1872e9.jpg


Add a background light and you can instantly change to something more like this:

6788982638_9b183d7fc2.jpg
 
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The photosel background is pretty handy and not too pricey!

This is the first one I could find on my Flickr


Set up-011 by Sir SR, on Flickr

Using this set up


Redeye 1 by Sir SR, on Flickr

And flipping it round to use the black side


Hat's Entertainment Reworked by Sir SR, on Flickr


Lencarta test 2 by Sir SR, on Flickr

So not sure what the best advice is? Keep plenty in your budget for lights/reflectors/modifiers/triggers and lots of reading/practice. That's what I did anyway!

S
 
Sharky said:
You can get good stands and cross pole from ebay for less than £50. Don't get one of the cheap kits that have thin stands and slot in cross poles, they won't last long. The kit and seller i got mine from is no more but item 121182876540 is the same, £44 (*the auction has nothing to do with me!). If you look in the item pics you can see how much chunky the kits is vs the really cheap ones and i've no complains with mine.
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Thanks i will give it a go
 
jonneymendoza said:
Thanks i will give it a go
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Just as a heads up, I've just received a message from the seller asking me for £12 postage because apparently Parcel Force won't deliver to me because I'm in a remote location (Northern Ireland!), which is funny because I've had plenty of things from PF before. I think there might be a surcharge for delivering to here, but as their listing said free UK delivery, I've explained to them that I'll not be paying any extra, so we'll see what happens......!
 
hi all. which should i go for? muslins or paper for background? which one is easier to transport as i need to bring it along on a location shoot!
 
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Muslin is cheaper and easier to transport, it is also better if you want a black background.
Paper is better in the sense that it's a much better surface to light
 
Sir SR said:
The photosel background is pretty handy and not too pricey!

This is the first one I could find on my Flickr


Set up-011 by Sir SR, on Flickr

Using this set up


Redeye 1 by Sir SR, on Flickr

And flipping it round to use the black side


Hat's Entertainment Reworked by Sir SR, on Flickr


Lencarta test 2 by Sir SR, on Flickr

So not sure what the best advice is? Keep plenty in your budget for lights/reflectors/modifiers/triggers and lots of reading/practice. That's what I did anyway!

S
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How do you find the tri- reflectors? They always look useful, do you think they'd be suitable outdoors on location? Thanks Mandy
 
Love my triflector, not sure how it would fare outdoors as I've only ever used it inside!

S
 
Just recieved my backdrop support stands and i must say they are brilliant. was a doddle to setup and weighs nothing yet feels very solid
 
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