HELP! advice needed with my studio lighting

keithh

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6 Oct 2006 - 8:48 AM

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Ok, so it's flourescent tube - and as such not much use other than to give your customer enough light to find her seat...it will also have an effect upon the colour cast within your photo's.

First thing is to replace that tube with a set of cheap halogen lights - the likes of argos, Ikea etc sell them at silly prices. They'll look better, be brighter and not give you ambient light problems.

Next is to beg, steal or borrow another light if you want to do white background high key stuff...or use your softboxed light on your subject and use one or two cheap flash guns to punch out your background. On high key, remember to have your background lighting 1/2 to one stop brighter than your subject light....easiest way is to play around with anything you can grab as your subject - once you've got the settings that work, then they'll work all the time....and you could have your background light/s wall mounted to save space.

Presuming you're shooting digital, then the pinky backgrounds are down to you not telling the camera what is white - either before shooting or afterwards in software. Your cameras manual will tell you how to set a manual white balance for your particular camera.

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nikon5700ite

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6 Oct 2006 - 9:01 AM

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If you have a large light source it will give you a flat result .. ie. the hardness of sunlight v. the softness of an overcast day. The hardness of early or late day lighting, from an angle v. the flat soft lighting of midday sun when the subject is well away from the camera.

If the light comes from a similar position as the camera you get a soft even result.

Light falls off at the inverse square of the distance between it and the subject, so a single light quickly creates dark shadows behind the subject. [Flash shots with flash at camera position].

Organise one light on the right of the camera and higher so that it creates a shadow of the nose. Have a second equally powerful light at x1.5 away from the subject on
the other side of the camera. That will give you a good contrast range for a colour shot.

Alternatively instead of having the second light further away from the subject you bring it up closer but to the side, using the spill from it to lighten the shadows on the subjects face and and most of it illuminates the background.

A couple of very basic approaches to get you started then you could read
this site
elseLarry Bolch or Chuck Gardner's

I don't like the idea of you using a flurescent tube for colour photography ..Check out Colour Temperature for a basic explanation.

[edit following Keith's suggestions]
If where you live is like where I live you will find lots of quite useful 'worklights and stands' at local hardware superstores. Advance on them is to organise 'barn doors' for them if you are a DIYer. Controlling where your light goes is one of the major steps in organising your studio.

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