I'm looking to set up a home studio

hqphotography

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I'm looking to set it up in one of the bedrooms in my home, but I have no idea what equipment I should get started with. Any ideas? Thanks for your help.
 
For portraits or products? How much money can we spend?

You need a reflector or 2 and a good hot shoe mounted speedlight.

A couple of light stands a second speedlight and a couple of umbrellas is nice

If you want to go full bore 2 800 ws, 1 1600 ws, and 1 400ws Alien Bee's works good. You need a selection of softboxes, scrims and gobo's to use the lights effectively.

As far as backdrops, I prefer seamless paper myself over muslin.
 
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Thanks for the info! I was wanting to set it up for portraits and looking for as low cost version as possible.
The key then is having a good understanding of light.

You shoot budget weddings so you have a couple of speedlights already, right?

For $80 bucks you can get a couple of light stands and umbrella mounts with cold shoes so you can use your speedlights shot into or through umbrellas for near studio quality light. You can get 40+ inch convertable umbrellas from B&H Photo Video for about $15 bucks each and they also carry the light stands and umbrella mounts.

Here is another kit that is popular for starting a studio if you don't already have speedlights.
 
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Speedlites are the lowest cost. Not the best for studio work, but would maybe get you by until you could get monolights or such. You get what you pay for in lighting.

Some will recommend Elinchrome, I have no experience in them.
I use alienbees and love them. I have yet to run into color temperature issues with mine in real world shooting. The newest alienbees will be even better (I hear), but I don't think they are out yet.
 

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