Bowens lighting, Home studio, baby photography

Julie1979

Julie1979

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Hi folks

I'm looking into some new lighting for my home studio. Shooting area is 2m x 2.5m so it's not huge. I currently only use some interfit lighting which I bought before starting my college course. At present I just use this for still life and the odd portrait as required for college so it's been sufficient for basic use.

Our first baby is due next month so i've been thinking for a while that it would be a good opportunity to upgrade my lights. I've been having a look on all the usual websites and trying to get a feel for what I want and going to pop into Calumet either this week or next

In the meantime can anyone give me any advice on the wattage I should be looking at. As it's mainly going to be the baby, then toddler, then older child as he/she grows up i'm thinking a max of 400w so have been looking at 200w and 400w kits. Cash budget is preferably no more than £1000 which includes having a 10% discount on Bowens if I register for a student card plus maybe another £150 if I can sell on my interfit lights either through here or to someone at college. Ideally i'd like to keep the £150 back for a flash trigger as my cheapo one is quite limited.

My gut feeling would be:
2 x 200w Bowens kits, 4 lights in total £881.38 incl discount
2 x 400w Bowens kits, 4 lights in total £1026 incl discount
1 x 200w and 1 x 400w, 4 lights in total £954 incl discount

(my thinking on the 2 x 200 + 2 x 400 is flexibility and the option to boost the background for high key work)

Apologies for the long post. Would appreciate some advice on whether or not i'm thinking on the right lines or not before I go into Calumet during the week?

Calumet are doing a free trigger offer although they appear to be out of stock on them at the moment but would mean that the additional cash up to a total of £1150'ish can be spent on modifiers.
 
BarryDawsib said:
Honestly if its just for shooting your baby or any tot with the amount of space available? why not stick with what you got? and take some of that money and spend it on a few quality modifiers that would make the job easier and open up creative avenues?
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I just feel like i've outgrown the interfit lights. If I kept them then i'd buy another set so that I had background lights.

This is the kit I bought a few years ago:
http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/74367/show.html

One gripe I do have with them (should have mentioned this) is the squeal that comes from them when they re-charge. I've tried taking shots of the cats and they bolt at the sound.
 
If they will be only used in that small space then the 400w is serious over kill. Im using 200w lencartas in a space nearly twice yours and it's plenty of power.

Do you need to pay bowens prices too? For your usage there are cheaper alternatives to spending a grand!
 
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Cris_L said:
If they will be only used in that small space then the 400w is serious over kill. Im using 200w lencartas in a space nearly twice yours and it's plenty of power.

Do you need to pay bowens prices too? For your usage there are cheaper alternatives to spending a grand!
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Agreed. One of the problems of having more power than you need in a small studio is that you won't be able to turn them down far enough, 200 ws is ample power in a room that size, don't create unnecessary problems for yourself by spending all that money on equipment that will cause problems instead of curing them. And bear in mind that if you ever find yourself in a position where you need more power, simply shooting at 200 ISO instead of 100 effectively doubles the power, at no cost.

And do you really need 4 lights anyway? If you're planning to produce white background shots then maybe you do, although again you'll struggle to get decent quality in such a small space, but if you don't then it's unlikely that you'll need 4 lights, and certainly not for babies.

Bowens is a good make, but very expensive for what they are. You may want to look at cheaper makes that will do exactly what you want them to do, for half the cost, and which are also fan cooled. And it's worth being aware that if you do decide to buy Bowens you may be forced to buy Bowens accessories for them, as it seems possible that the latest Bowens lights from their Chinese factory have a slightly different fitting, forcing people to buy their accessories too.
 
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I have a couple of new 500R heads here and all my old existing accessories with the S type fitting go off and on them as easy as the do on the older gemini's I have here.

My biggest concern with having 4 heads set up in such a small area would be the shear amount of space you'll lose to the stands etc, you'll struggle to get any distance between the background and you'll quite probably still end up with a hard light at low power.

If you do need the 4 heads, keep the interfits and get a pair of lencarta heads to make up the set and save a bundle :thumbs:
 
Thanks for the responses. I've had a look into Lencarta and may go down that route. My main reason for going down the Bowens route was familiarity as that's what we use in college.

The shooting area I mentioned does currently have an additional metre around it for positioning lights and if I adjust my desk then I can increase even more, the room itself is 6m x 4m.

The interfit lights do need to go, i've outgrown them and the squeal is painful on the ears.
 
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