How to light a white background with two lights?

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Corbus

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I had use of a studio yesterday and would love to set up one at home for personal use. I can only really afford a two light setup and the one I'm looking at has 150w modelling lamps.

All the rigs I see set up online when googling involve 3 or 4 lights, so I'm wondering if it's possible to achieve the classic white background look on just two lights, and if so how? I understand about the use of a light meter so that's not really an issue, it's more where would I need to position the lights in relation to the background and subject? I'm fairly short on space, I'd have a softbox and umbrella with the kit and would like to be able to achieve it without having to buy extra bits.
 
Hi Corbus, welcome to the forum:wave:

the way i have done this in the past is to have each light about 3ft back from your background and at an angle of 45 degrees. you will need to tweek the positioning until you have an even spread of light. if you have one, a hand held light meter will work for this.

One thing to watch for is backlighting of the subject which will occur if they are too close to the background or if the lights are too strong.

you can then adjust the power of the lights until your happy. I think if you aim for 1/2 to 1 stop overexposed on the background (versus the subject exposure) this will be adequate. You then use you built in flash or flashgun to light the subject.

hope this helps

Andy
 
Thanks Andy.

The only issue I think I'll have there is that my D60 doesn't have wireless capabilities, so I have to have the trigger for the flashes on the hotshoe mount, meaning I can't use another flash.
 
Hi Corbus

sorry i forgot to mention i don't use wireless either i use a cable running from the camera into the box of tricks to control firing sequence and light power etc
 
Corbus said:
Thanks Andy.

The only issue I think I'll have there is that my D60 doesn't have wireless capabilities, so I have to have the trigger for the flashes on the hotshoe mount, meaning I can't use another flash.
Click to expand...

Yes you can :) The studio lights have built in slaves, (this is why you only have to plug into one of them) so your onboard flash should trigger both studio lights. Give it a bash!
 
AliB said:
Yes you can :) The studio lights have built in slaves, (this is why you only have to plug into one of them) so your onboard flash should trigger both studio lights. Give it a bash!
Click to expand...

There's a hotshoe mount that triggers the flashes, so with that on there I wouldn't be able to fit the external flash, as that only works when mounted on the hotshoe.

Or am I missing something here?
 
Which lights? The hotshoe mount is normally a wireless trigger that sends to a receiver plugged int a jack on one of the lights.
Are there 2 little dimples one on top of each light?
 
PsiFox said:
Which lights? The hotshoe mount is normally a wireless trigger that sends to a receiver plugged int a jack on one of the lights.
Are there 2 little dimples one on top of each light?
Click to expand...


Right, the hotshoe mount wirelessly triggers the flash on one of the lights, which in turn can trigger the flash on the other light. I only have an SB-400 which can't be triggered other than on the hotshoe, where the wireless trigger would already sit. :shrug:
 
If the 2nd flash (other) is triggered by by the first then both will trigger off a camera mounted flash unit, just unplug the receiver stick on the flash and see.
 
PsiFox said:
If the 2nd flash (other) is triggered by by the first then both will trigger off a camera mounted flash unit, just unplug the receiver stick on the flash and see.
Click to expand...

Really? Ah, well this could change things, I haven't got the kit yet but a friend of mine has so I'll go and try (He doesn't have an external flash).
 
:) Yep, that's the idea!

That's exactly how IR triggers work too. All you are doing is substituting IR for visible spectrum light. Should trigger the two flash heads a treat. I've done it with mine and it works a treat. :)
 
AliB said:
:) Yep, that's the idea!

That's exactly how IR triggers work too. All you are doing is substituting IR for visible spectrum light. Should trigger the two flash heads a treat. I've done it with mine and it works a treat. :)
Click to expand...


Well that's great, looks like there's hope! Thank you all so much for your help, if all goes well in testing I'll be buying the kit for sure.
 
Right, we tried it and yes, it works :thumbs:

The only 'issue' I can see is that you can't control power output on the SB400, would there be more benefit in bouncing that one off the ceiling (mine is quite low) as I will only be about 4-6 foot away from the subject? I guess I'm worried about overexposing the subject.
 
I'm not an expert on the Nikon flash system but there should be a way of turning it down a bit even if it's just flash -ev. Time to have a look at the manual. :)
 
Depending on the camera, any body with an internal flash will enable you ro "turn down" the flash using the flash EV on the left hand side of the prism. However, the more pro bodies don't have this function.
 
Corbus used my lighting tonight but on a different background than the one I'm used to (which incidentally I've mastered without too many issues). I must admit, I wasn't aware I could use a speedlight but one thing we found is that when using a speedlight on the hot shoe, the power of the lamps is affected quite a lot, as in the lamp power significantly decreases, and it left a grey background even on full flash power. However, we did get somewhere in the end and it wasn't too bad, but it shows that both of us still have a bit to learn.

Better results were had without the speedlight by quite some way.
 
At a guess, the preflash from the speedlite will set off the studio strobes. Put the camera into manual with manual flash and you should get better results. I could be wrong of course.
 
buy a lastolite hilite. perfect blown out background using 1 light. the other is used as the key light.

simples!
 
Everything was in manual, not sure why that would happen, maybe we'd have had better success with an SB600 or SB800 perhaps?
 
Rovers_Andy said:
Hi Corbus, welcome to the forum:wave:

the way i have done this in the past is to have each light about 3ft back from your background and at an angle of 45 degrees. you will need to tweek the positioning until you have an even spread of light. if you have one, a hand held light meter will work for this.

One thing to watch for is backlighting of the subject which will occur if they are too close to the background or if the lights are too strong.

you can then adjust the power of the lights until your happy. I think if you aim for 1/2 to 1 stop overexposed on the background (versus the subject exposure) this will be adequate. You then use you built in flash or flashgun to light the subject.

hope this helps

Andy
Click to expand...


I have the exact same problem and tried what you have said but now I am getting an unwanted shadow on the object. I used the flash from my camera.
 
Dman said:
Everything was in manual, not sure why that would happen, maybe we'd have had better success with an SB600 or SB800 perhaps?
Click to expand...

When you say everything, did you specifically set the flash to manual. Even if the camera is in manual mode you need to set the flash also to manual.
 
you say you have a trigger on the camera to fire the strobes ,dont the strobes have a built in slave ( most have ) then if you have a flash on your camera when it fires the strobes will too so no need for a trigger .
Rob.
 
davidcod said:
I have the exact same problem and tried what you have said but now I am getting an unwanted shadow on the object. I used the flash from my camera.
Click to expand...

you could try to sofen the direct light ,either make something or try tissue round the flash .
Rob.
 
Corbus said:
Thanks Andy.

The only issue I think I'll have there is that my D60 doesn't have wireless capabilities, so I have to have the trigger for the flashes on the hotshoe mount, meaning I can't use another flash.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm missing something here, but triggering studio flash is not complicated!

I would be surprised if your camera doesn't have a co-ax sync socket in addition to the hot shoe. If it doesn't, get a hot shoe to co-ax adaptor from Jessops for a tenner.

The studio flash heads should come with a long co-ax sync cable, plus they will have built in optical slaves. Plug the lead into the camera and the nearest flash, and when that fires it will trigger any other lights via their slaves.

That's all there is (usually) to it.
 
barneyrubble said:
When you say everything, did you specifically set the flash to manual. Even if the camera is in manual mode you need to set the flash also to manual.
Click to expand...

Gotcha :thumbs:

Didn't realise I could do this with the SB400 but had a quick scoot through the camera manual and it seems I can, will give this a go tonight.

Thanks
 
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