Basics to learn with?

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LancsMak

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So I want to expand my photography skills which are currently all based around sports. I'd like to give a bit of basic studio lighting work a go and was wondering what sort of basis kit/brands people would suggest? My thinking so far...

I've got a white/black pop up backdrop, use that.
Get a pair of cheap (what?) softboxes
Read up and experiment.

Would welcome thoughts and experiences.
 
Please tell us more so that we can offer useful guidance . . .

What types of subject do you want to light?

What's the size of your studio space?

What's the height?
 
Garry Edwards said:
Please tell us more so that we can offer useful guidance . . .

What types of subject do you want to light?

What's the size of your studio space?

What's the height?
Click to expand...
Subjects mostly dogs to start with. Easily available!

Size will be temporary setup in a room. Let's say 2m cubed
 
Well, dogs vary a lot. You'll need to have both soft lighting (e.g. softboxes) for shiny breeds such as black labs and hard lighting (e.g. small light sources) for things like poodles and the Hungarian Pulis and similar.

Brands don't really matter, as long as you avoid the eBay/Amazon junk that has fixed reflectors, other than those there aren't really any bad brands now. Godox now has a virtual monopoly, but they are now poor value for money IMO and a lot of people are moving over to Neewer.

If you click on the "Resources" tab above and then on "Photography technique" you'll find a few tutorials on lighting, mostly written by me so not very good, but they should get you started.

You basically have 3 choices, continuous lighting, flashgun and studio lighting. Continuous lighting is popular with beginners but please don't go there, especially for live subjects. Flashguns are also popular, and very useful, but mains-powered flash is far more versatile and also offers far better value for money. There are also some tutorials in this forum, we call them "Lighting challenges" but they are also tutorials that explain the principles of lighting.

There's also some very good stuff on YouTube, but it tends to get buried amongst the rubbish and the marketing videos, and it's hard for beginners to tell the wheat from the chaff, so perhaps best left until you understand the principles.

A 2 x 2 metre area should be fine for most dogs, but may be too limited to include a background, which will normally need to be lit separately from the main subject.

Hope this helps, please come back with any questions.
 
LancsMak said:
That's fantastic thank you I'll go do my homework :).
Click to expand...
You can usually find old sets of Lencarta Smartflash or Elinchrom on eBay for very reasonable sums.

There’s a set of 5 heads in the classifieds here, try to buy 2 for half the offer price or a bit more.
 
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