Advice on inexpensive lighting for taking adult photo at home please

fishburger · Dec 21, 2016

Are two LEDs with 7000 lumen with 5000K white color each good enough? Shall I keep the Husky worklight or go to a photography store to buy two sets of light bulbs and white umbrella?

Derrel · Dec 21, 2016

Window screen frames can have thin, whie fabric stretched over them, to create "scrims". The advantage to photographic lights is that they typically have some way to hold umbrellas steady, so the light can be shined through the umbrellas. If you do not have umbrellas, consider making some do it yourelf scrims or diffusing panels, or home-made boards. Or use 4 lengths of PVC pipe, and four elbow joints to make a frame, and cover the frame with thin, white material, and shine the light through that.

Placing a large scrim, with frosted mylar, or tracing paper, or white fabric (nylon or rayon are common today, thin silk was common 60 years ago), in front of a BRIGHT light souce is a very old way to make beautiful photos.

Look into scrim lighting, or diffusion panels, on YouTube.

fishburger · Dec 22, 2016

Thanks. If I want to also take photos of myself with large metallic objects, is there any additional products that I will need?

I tried to take photos of two large computer desktop towers made of metals. Imagine the scene that two large metal computer cases placing next to each other. I am taking photos of the front view and perspective view. The gap between the two cases are about 10-15 cm wide. When I took the photos, I found several blocks of large shadows cast by the towers in the gap. Some wires from the towers also cast shadows on the desk. Anyway to get rid of those shadows? Sometimes I just want to take photos of the two towers. Sometimes I want to take photo of myself behind the towers. Any good advice appreciated.

Designer · Dec 22, 2016

fishburger said:
Are two LEDs with 7000 lumen with 5000K white color each good enough? Shall I keep the Husky worklight or go to a photography store to buy two sets of light bulbs and white umbrella?

Since we are not there with a light meter, it is going to be hard to say if they are "good enough". When you look at the lights, they seem fairly bright, even though a flash (which lasts only for a fraction of a second) is actually brighter, you just don't see the brightness of it due to the fast action.

It is that very fast flash that helps to keep your portraits sharp, as it "freezes" any movement from your model.

Using continuous lighting (work lights, room lights, window light, or photography lights that do not flash) is going to be hit or miss, as you really don't have enough light to "freeze" any motion.

Also, by bouncing your lights off a wall is going to yield less light "power" on your model, which is another reason to use the more powerful flash type lights.

Derrel · Dec 22, 2016

To avoid Shadows between nearby objects the easiest way to do that is to make sure the light comes at a fairly frontal angle and does not create a shadow. Secondly Shadows are either soft-edged or hard-edged, depending upon how much diffusion there is in front of a studio light or worklight. If the Shadows you have are too hard and too sharp at the edges, the light needs more diffusing material. Diffusing material softens the light by making the effective Source larger. The same thing happens when a light is bounced off of a wall or ceiling, the light source becomes larger and softer. In terms of easy to work with lighting electronic flash units are actually pretty good. Look at the nice photos above-- those photos are done with what is called Bounce lighting. Some work type lights use pencil shaped quartz halogen lamps in those, which caused hard shadows, and almost absolutely demand diffusing or bouncing to get acceptable lighting for many subjects.

fishburger · Dec 23, 2016

Thanks. I shall try various materials. On the internet, there are some videos to show using software to remove the shadow. In general, is it a good idea to do that? Will the edited photos still considered to be authentic?

greybeard · Dec 24, 2016

I don't own nor have I ever used an iPhone but if it works like every other cell phone camera I've seen, it doesn't have a built in strobe but has a LED that comes on just before you take the picture and goes off shortly after. This probably won't work as a strobe trigger and I doubt there is any connection from the phone that will let you hardwire it to strobes. So, continuous lights will have to do. Point whatever light sources you get at the walls and not at the subject. This will give you indirect lighting and will be the most flattering.