indoor lighting

mleger · Jan 25, 2007

I am an outdoor mx photographer. No real education in photography. I have been asked to do indoor portraits, etc. Need info on lighting.

Are light boxes the best or umbrellas?

Are there better packages than others?

I know this may sound silly, but I have NO indoor background. I do my work outdoors.

Thanks, Michele w/TSRMXRACING.COM

http://www.tsrphotography.com

Johnboy2978 · Jan 25, 2007

Here's a question that comes up pretty regularly around here, so you might be served well by searching keywords like lighting in the forum search. The long and short of it goes like this.... for indoor portrait lighting, strobe is better than continuous lighting (another popular question), softboxes are generally more controllable and softer than umbrellas, and some packages are better than others. A popular brand recommended not only in this forum but many others I visit is Alien Bees which is a sister company to Paul C. Buff's White Lightening co. Alien bees are wonderful quality strobes with a reasonable price. They have many packages from a beginner to a studio in a box. As with most other things the more lights the merrier, but you can pull off a decent portrait with 1-2 strobes (I still only have one and supplement with a sigma flash as a slave at times). In comparing prices, always remember you get what you pay for and if you see yourself doing more and more portraits, you might as well get a decent strobe initially rather than getting an ebay special which will serve more as a frustration than anything else. On the other hand, you may want to search ebay for alien bee or white lightening and get a few bucks off of a gently used set.