Best Studio Lighting for Indoor Headshots ?

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matt99b

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I usually shoot actor's headshots outside, but thought it was time to spread my wings and start shooting indoors, as it will allow me to get good shots throughout the day, even during bad weather. As I'm selling these headshots as a service, I need to get decent results.

I will be shooting actor's headshots indoors in a dark room with no windows. Is 2 x 150w lights enough? (I will also use a white/silver reflector, softbox, and silver umbrella)

The alternative is to spend more. But I don't want to do this if I can achieve very decent results with the 150w set.

I have a very small space, so the smaller the equipment the better. But I don't want to compromise on quality. I'm basically looking to get the best indoor actors' headshots on the lowest budget.

From my past experience, I have managed to get excellent results, not by having top range equipment, but through skill, perserverance and knowledge. So, my gut instict is telling me to go for the 150 watt lights and it'll be fine as long as I can work them well.

Is 2 x 150w lights enough for indoor headshots in a 4x4m dark room with no other light source?

Here it is: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...atchlink:top:uk

I would welcome comments and advice, and especially examples from people who have actually used 2 x 150w lights in a dark room, to shoot headshots.

Many thanks! :-)

Matt :bonk:

PS- Or maybe I should get these cold lights? Might be useful to be able to see what I'm shooting and no have to have a separate light meter... But are they decent enough /powerful enough / is 2 lights enough to get good headshots? I guess could also use these for video work... ? http://www.cameras2u.com/Store/s626.../Super-Cool-lite-5-Twin-Head-Kit/details.aspx
 
Thanks for the fast reply :-)

I'm now starting to sway more towards these interfit cool lights: http://www.cameras2u.com/Store/s626.../Super-Cool-lite-5-Twin-Head-Kit/details.aspx

As its continuous lighting...

Does anyone have any experience of these? They are apparently 500W lights. However, I notice it reads "24W X 5" which surely would mean 120W?!

I'm guessing this would be good for headshots though... and video work?
 
They're flourescent so don't have a filament to get hot. Light output may be equivalent to a 500w normal filament bulb

They may flicker very slightly at 50 or 60 cycles per second - Wouldn't be an issue for stills, but would it cause a problem with video?
 
hmm... well for the cool lights, I read a review here http://www.thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk/product_details.php?id=3214 that they're "suitable for use with conventional still digital or video cameras"...

The video bit aside, as they're equivalent to 500W and continuous, I'm guessing they would be much better lighting than th 150w ones. I could be wrong - although they are advertised as daylight balanced, the temperature of them is someting like 5000k instead of 5600k... would this be a problem?

Does anyone have any experience with these interfit cool lights? They any good for results?
 
maybe I'll just get them and see! Can always sell em on ebay I guess!
 
matt99b said:
hmm... well for the cool lights, I read a review here http://www.thedigitalcamerashop.co.uk/product_details.php?id=3214 that they're "suitable for use with conventional still digital or video cameras"...

The video bit aside, as they're equivalent to 500W and continuous, I'm guessing they would be much better lighting than th 150w ones. I could be wrong - although they are advertised as daylight balanced, the temperature of them is someting like 5000k instead of 5600k... would this be a problem?

Does anyone have any experience with these interfit cool lights? They any good for results?
Click to expand...

I have both the continuous and flash lighting sets, the flash are much much better. Go for a set of home studio EX150's from interfits, upgrade the modelling lights from 60w to 100w and you are laughing :)

Link to interfit EX150 @ £179.99 delivered
 
Several questions here...

Firstly, forget about any form of continuous lighting for people photography. The power is far too low, the adjustment range is too limited, they only have a very limited range of light modifiers available and unless the CRI (colour rendition index) is at least 90 then they will reproduce colours very badly. Once you've got the hang of using flash you won't see any advantages in continuous lighting...

Is 150 watts (actually watt-seconds or Joules) enough? Probably, for most people, most of the time. And if it isn't you can always increase the effective power by increasing the ISO, although that can affect image quality. Power itself can be a misleading term, 150 Joules simply means that 150 Joules of energy are stored in the capacitors, not that the head produces any specific quantity of light. Guide numbers are far more meaningful, but only if the equipment is tested under realistic conditions - and seeing some of the claims made for some equipment, I have doubts about the testing conditions.

Having said all this, it's a good idea to get something a little more powerful, more powerful lights are more versatile and aren't running at their limit all the time.

Interfit? Widely available, sold in camera shops but unfortunately they don't seem to have a good reputation for reliability. Chinese made of course.

Elemental? I've seen identical lights sold under different names. The seller seems to be a new kid on the block, they may be OK. The lights themselves are about as basic as it gets and the modelling lamps are inadequate but they seem to be good value for money so if you don't mind taking a risk they may be a good buy. Again, Chinese.

If you want something better you might want to take a look at Lencarta, which are one of the good Chinese brands and which are a known quantity. More expensive but with good build quality and good accessories.

The next step up would be either Bowens or Elinchrom, both safe buys and pretty equal to each other but much more expensive.

Basically you pays your money and takes your choice...

Hope this helps.

P.S., I've got both Elinchrom and Lencarta in my studio (Bradford) and anyone who wants to try them out is very welcome to visit by arrangement. Just PM me.
 
I've got three Interfit ex300 heads and never had a problem with reliability. The real advantage of them is that they take the Bowen's accessories which are terrific. Keep the costs down by buying interfit and use Bowens beauty dish or honeycombs (they are brilliant)
I also have a set of Interfit Halogens continuous lights and I only ever use them if I want to use shutter speeds that are higher than the sych speeds of my camera 1/250 sec.
 
I've got the same transmitter too and it seems to work OK so long as you make sure that the lights are in front of you. I did have a problem once when I got a little ahead of one of the lights. Just one to look out for. If you are using a light meter you can use the trigger off camera to fire the lights and get your meter reading.

Have fun with them and really look forward to seeing the results.
 
Thanks AliB. Thats a good point you made - I'm used to outdoor photography, where I'm able to set the aperture and shutter speed according to the meter reading through the lens of my DSLR.

I will want to be using f1.8 most of the time, ideally. How would I get the correct shutter speed for these lights, seeing as I can't see the image through the lens before the photo is taken (and flash happens)? Trial and error?

Matt
 
matt99b said:
Thanks AliB. Thats a good point you made - I'm used to outdoor photography, where I'm able to set the aperture and shutter speed according to the meter reading through the lens of my DSLR.

I will want to be using f1.8 most of the time, ideally. How would I get the correct shutter speed for these lights, seeing as I can't see the image through the lens before the photo is taken (and flash happens)? Trial and error?

Matt
Click to expand...

You need to understand the absolute basics - shutter speed has no measurable effect when used with studio flash at any 'normal' speed - just make sure that you set the shutter to at least one notch slower than it says in the camera manual. Your only control is aperture, not counting the ISO setting, so if you want to use a wide aperture you'll need to reduce the power of the flash enough to allow you to do that.

Not sure whether your lights have that much adjustment, if not you'll need to use neutral density gels in front of the lights (best solution) or a neutral density filter on your camera lens (can make autofocussing difficult)
 
i can understand the need to use a wide appeture when you are outside, blur the background to make the actor stand out, but why in a studio??if you have a plain background??
 
fraggle101 said:
i can understand the need to use a wide appeture when you are outside, blur the background to make the actor stand out, but why in a studio??if you have a plain background??
Click to expand...

Just a style thing. I sometimes like to have back of the head (hair etc) out of focus...
 
Thats fair enough, the only thing is some of the cheap lights arnt as adjustable as their bigger brothers... and unless you have plenty of room to move them further away you may find youself over exposing at that app.. other than what Garry said, u could use an ND filter but thats not ideal.. not a problem either..
 
AliB said:
Have fun with them and really look forward to seeing the results.
Click to expand...

Well, the lights finally arrived.. sorry for the delay... I ordered them and paid quite a bit extra for next day delivery but they arrived 6 days late. Don't use Fotosense.co.uk - Also read many bad reviews about them from other people too.

So, here are some of the results:

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics832.jpg

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics816.jpg

Any advice deeply appreciated.

Thanks
 
Well they work! Seriously though, those aren't bad at all, but the skin tones aren't very consistent and there's some areas which (in my opinion) could really benefit from some bounced light arriving.

Studio lighting vs natural lighting is a very big jump in thinking, you have far more control, so go wild for a while and experiment with reflectors etc.

If you want some advice from my experience, buy a LARGE stuffed animal (the type you win at a fair) and stick it on a chair - it won't complain when you practise your lighting techinques, never moves and if you want to start seeing how light really works on it and in play around avoiding hot spots, stretch a pair of flesh coloured tights over it - it'll look odd and people will be worried about you, but it's a very useful 'dummy' model for practise!

Cheers,
James
 
thanks very much for the tip. I'm concerned about the skin tones in those pics, and also concerned with the "flatness" of the lighting. It's almost too soft for my taste; yet in all the tutorials I've read, softboxes are the way to go apparently.

The skin tones though, are awful.

I could just photoshop every image I take but this isn't ideal. Odd thing is, the camera display shows these images as beautiful skin tones. Which means I can't trust the camera display from now on! Not good.

I'm comparing the skin tones to those of other pro photographers' indoor studio lighting shots, on my PC monitor, so I have a consistent benchmark to go by for now.

Any more advice would be deeply appreciated.
 
Here are my photoshopped pics with corrected colour tones..

Clearly the hair will need lighting in the future.

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics832COLOR.jpg
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics816COLOR.jpg

And here are my conversions to black & white..

http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics832BW.jpg
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll320/matt99b/canonpics816BW.jpg

I heard lots of bad reviews of software conversion to black & white, and that you should always shoot b+w on camera. Does anyone know why? What is so bad about these?

I also feel that these pics are a bit too "sharpened" yet I haven't done any sharpening which is odd. They look somehow sharpened artificially in my opinion.

Comments and advice appreciated! :-)
 
I would totally disagree with the statment you should always shoot B+W on camera.

You just need a decent image editing program, combined with a knowledge of what looks good.

Are you shooting in RAW? If so then it's all about the post processing. Download a trial of Adobe Lightroom and have a play, I think you'll be very impressed with how something like that could help you. Regardless of 'normal' Photoshop, Lightroom is very good for quick edit - do a search for some black and white Lightroom effects in google and you'll see there are many available for download.

As long as you shoot RAW, you're working with the maximum amount of data, afterwards it's all about the processing in wringing ever last pixel out of 'em :D

Cheers,
James
 
matt99b said:
thanks very much for the tip. I'm concerned about the skin tones in those pics, and also concerned with the "flatness" of the lighting. It's almost too soft for my taste; yet in all the tutorials I've read, softboxes are the way to go apparently.

The skin tones though, are awful.

I could just photoshop every image I take but this isn't ideal. Odd thing is, the camera display shows these images as beautiful skin tones. Which means I can't trust the camera display from now on! Not good.

I'm comparing the skin tones to those of other pro photographers' indoor studio lighting shots, on my PC monitor, so I have a consistent benchmark to go by for now.

Any more advice would be deeply appreciated.
Click to expand...

1. Don't confuse flat lighting with soft lighting, not the same thing at all. Flat lighting is were the light is more or less where the camera is (or worse) one light each side of the subject.

Soft lighting is where the light source is (considerably) larger than the subject, and is placed so close to the subject that the light wraps around.

(Large) softboxes can produce soft lighting, but only very close to the subject and only at the right angle.

2. Not sure about your 'awful' skin tones...
Maybe you've set your white balance to the wrong setting, or perhaps you've set it to auto, which of course can't work with flash.
If not, the problem may be inconsistent colour and/or power between flashes, in which case the only answer is to send your gear back and get something better.
 
Garry Edwards said:
1. Don't confuse flat lighting with soft lighting, not the same thing at all. Flat lighting is were the light is more or less where the camera is (or worse) one light each side of the subject.

2. Not sure about your 'awful' skin tones...
Maybe you've set your white balance to the wrong setting, or perhaps you've set it to auto, which of course can't work with flash.
If not, the problem may be inconsistent colour and/or power between flashes, in which case the only answer is to send your gear back and get something better.
Click to expand...

I'm not confusing flat lighting with soft lighting, don't worry. I know the difference.

I am sure about the skin tones. I've already mentioned about the white balance setting- was looking for some specific advice regarding this.

There is no evidence to show inconsistent colour or power between flashes. I've displayed 2 photos, both of which show similar tones. Inconsistency is not where my problem or question lies..

Thanks for the try though, I appreciate the reply. Not to worry... I'll experiment and keep researching.
 
matt99b said:
I'm not confusing flat lighting with soft lighting, don't worry. I know the difference.

I am sure about the skin tones. I've already mentioned about the white balance setting- was looking for some specific advice regarding this.

There is no evidence to show inconsistent colour or power between flashes. I've displayed 2 photos, both of which show similar tones. Inconsistency is not where my problem or question lies..

Thanks for the try though, I appreciate the reply. Not to worry... I'll experiment and keep researching.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to patronise you, it's impossible, just from reading a post, to work out how much people know and whether or not they're confusing terminology.

If you explain exactly what you think the problem is with the skin tones I'm sure someone will be able to help. And if you explain how you're arriving at your white balance settings you'll get help on this too.
 
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