New studio advice needed please.

[Deleted member 41401]

Hi everyone. I've been lurking here for a few months and enjoying the informative threads, having in mind that I would be making my own studio at some stage. Anyhow, that time has now come! So, before I make any expensive, ill-advised or ill-informed mistakes I was wondering if I could get some advice please.
Basically, I'm a relatively experienced (and obsessed) amateur photographer taking pictures of absolutely everything that I can ... portraits, sport, landscapes, macros, seascapes, architecture... everything! I've noticed in the last few months that I have unwittingly shifted a lot of my emphasis towards portraits (mainly ladies) outdoors using my speedlights, one in a softbox and the other bare as a hair/rim light as needed. Despite having limited to no independent experience in studio portraiture, I regularly attend "introduction to studio lighting" and "advanced studio lighting" courses arranged through my camera club and funded by a local council at a big discount (just £7 per half day session). Anyway, in total, I have attended about a dozen of these and have learned/reinforced the basics and more.

My wife has a vacant partitioned area off her shop which she has been encouraging me to turn into a small studio space. It measures 20ft x 15ft with a 9ft ceiling height. There are 3 doors at one end. With regards to equipment, I already have a cheapo set of 3 heads, which I acquired a couple of years ago and have only used around the house a few times. I'm not sure, but I reckon they are about 150 watts each. They came with two 70x50cm softboxes and 3 small umbrellas (none of which are particularly good quality). I was thinking that I could maybe use these to light backgrounds. Additionally, I have 2 speedlights that could be employed as hairlights etc at a push/as needed. Following some excellent threads on here, I have decided to buy a Lencarta Elite Pro 2 (300 watts) lighting set, with one umbrella and probably a 95cm octobox to get me started. Maybe also adding a beauty dish for some variety early on.

At this point, I should add that I hope that the studio uses will be portraits/family groups/pets. I'm hoping that I might also have the odd external indoor shoot/event, with help and advice for that from a photographer friend who specialises in that area. That's the reasoning for me thinking along the lines of the Elite Pro 2's for their slightly better build/higher power rather than the Smartflash 2 kit.

I am not sure what colour walls/backdrops to have for maximum versatility. I visited a friend on Tuesday who has a small studio. He has a permanent 3x6 metre mottled blue/grey muslin backdrop that he does his full length shots on and grey walls for the rest of his portraits. I liked the idea of that. I was thinking of the muslin background at one end and then for versatility, on one 20ft wall painting half grey and half black and painting the other 20ft wall white. Does this make sense? Any suggestions/advice on this and everything else I've mentioned would be really welcome.

Cheers in advance for any replies.

 

[connersz]

Are you asking what colour backgrounds you should have in your studio? If so it's going to be difficult to answer that one as it comes down to the kind of style images you want to achieve. It's not likely you will find any single colour.

 

[Deleted member 41401]

Are you asking what colour backgrounds you should have in your studio? If so it's going to be difficult to answer that one as it comes down to the kind of style images you want to achieve. It's not likely you will find any single colour.

Kind of. I realise that it's fairly easy to make virtually any colour (including black and white) from a mid grey, but was wondering if it's worth just painting black and white areas of the wall to make it easier!

 

[connersz]

Kind of. I realise that it's fairly easy to make virtually any colour (including black and white) from a mid grey, but was wondering if it's worth just painting black and white areas of the wall to make it easier!

Well if you want a black or white background then try it.

 

[Garry Edwards]

The choice of backgrounds is really down to personal preferences and budget.
The blue mottled ones were popular in the 90's or maybe the 80's, - still popular in the USA personally I think that's horrible but, as I said, it's personal choice.
White is still popular, it can be lit separately to produce pure white, it can be unlit to produce varying shades of grey, and the effect is variable depending on how much space you have between the front subject and the background, and on how close your subject lighting is to your subject - use the inverse square law to reduce the amount of light reaching the background by reducing light to subject distance and by increasing subject to background distance. White vinyl is a good choice for this, it isn't cheap but it lasts well.
If you want a black background, the best (as well as the cheapest) is black muslin.
Grey offers a range of choices, you can light it or not, you can light parts of it and you can change the colour with lighting gels. For a grey background, paper is the best option, but can get expensive.
Or, if you only want it as a background (not for full length shots where the subjects are standing on it too) then you can just paint the wall, using matt paint.

 

[Deleted member 41401]

The choice of backgrounds is really down to personal preferences and budget.
The blue mottled ones were popular in the 90's or maybe the 80's, - still popular in the USA personally I think that's horrible but, as I said, it's personal choice.
White is still popular, it can be lit separately to produce pure white, it can be unlit to produce varying shades of grey, and the effect is variable depending on how much space you have between the front subject and the background, and on how close your subject lighting is to your subject - use the inverse square law to reduce the amount of light reaching the background by reducing light to subject distance and by increasing subject to background distance. White vinyl is a good choice for this, it isn't cheap but it lasts well.
If you want a black background, the best (as well as the cheapest) is black muslin.
Grey offers a range of choices, you can light it or not, you can light parts of it and you can change the colour with lighting gels. For a grey background, paper is the best option, but can get expensive.
Or, if you only want it as a background (not for full length shots where the subjects are standing on it too) then you can just paint the wall, using matt paint.

Thank you Garry, that's excellent and very useful advice. The mottled backdrops were in vogue that long ago, eh? ... but still in the USA? ...Hmmmm! I'll think on.....
Whilst you are on Garry, any idea when the Elite Pro2 set will be back in stock please?

 

[Garry Edwards]

Thank you Garry, that's excellent and very useful advice. The mottled backdrops were in vogue that long ago, eh? ... but still in the USA? ...Hmmmm! I'll think on.....
Whilst you are on Garry, any idea when the Elite Pro2 set will be back in stock please?

Well, I'm definately not anti-American, I used to work there and I still do American > English translations, but their photographic tastes do seem to be different to ours...
The short answer with the ElitePro is that we simply don't know yet.
We had a delivery in yesterday (that should have arrived on Monday) that was stopped at HK because the paperwork hadn't been done properly for the lithium batteries that were included. We had to get people to remove he lithium batteries, but somehow in the process the ElitePro heads were removed too, which we only found out about yesterday.
We're trying to find out why this happened, but more the point, we're trying to find out where they are now and when we'll get them. And due to timezone differences, we haven't got that info yet.

 

[Deleted member 41401]

Just to close the circle, I ended up getting the Lencarta Elite pro2 set last month. After being on holiday and other stuff, I finally managed to set up my first little studio at the weekend and even got my youngest to give me 15 minutes of his valuable time to try out my new kit yesterday. I'm delighted with it. I got a profold 120cm octa too, but haven't unboxed it yet, but did use the 100x70 that I got in the Lencarta sale. Garry has been absolutely fantastic all along. Thanks very much to everyone else that has helped me and to all the contributors on the very many threads in this section of TP, from which I have learned lots.

Calvin