Soft box and lights questions

rubbertree · Oct 16, 2008

I originally posted these questions in the "everything you want to know about lighting" thread that was going on a while ago. At HelenB's suggestion, I am starting a separate thread about it, in hopes to get a good discussion going on here. This is the original post:

My DH made me a soft box about 3feet square. I used draped white fabric off the top, sides and bottom. Attached 2 clamp lights to either side with 40 watt regular light bulbs. Pictures still don't look the way I want them to.
Do I need higher wattage? A specific light bulb? Do I set my white balance on auto or must it be set to the type of light bulb used?
Can I use the soft box anywhere in the house or does the lighting within the house make a difference?

I set up my soft box again this am and set up the lights (my clamps must not be very good, they keep wanting to swing down, heavy lights I guess? Does it matter if the lights touch the fabric or should they be set away from it?)

Anyway, I am still getting blue or pink casts in the pictures. Can you help?

edit to add, I was shooting in RAW and used the incandescent WB setting, and varied the setting between -3 up to +3 to see if I could get a correct color. I could not. Is it necessary to set the WB if shoot in RAW?

Alleh Lindquist · Oct 16, 2008

Well with RAW no matter what WB you shoot at if you know how to do color correction you can always set it right.

Continuous lighting or hot lights will almost never give you the image you are looking for unless they are professional level lights and even those I think are not even remotely powerful enough. I shot a portrait with 2 Kino Flow 4 banks and at full power still had to shot ISO 200 f2.8 1/60th. Way to slow for what I wanted.

Rather than waste money on hot lights just buy a couple Nikon SB-28's and some ebay triggers (cactus V2 Triggers) to fire them off camera. You will instantly get better results. Read www.strobist.com lighting 101 and 102 to learn to light.

Don Kondra · Oct 16, 2008

As Alleh knows, I am not a fan of flash

You can correct the color when you process the raw file or you can use CF 5500k bulbs.

I will admit though that with single head reflectors and a diffuser you will not have enough light to shoot anything but smaller objects.

Check these guys out - http://alzodigital.com/online_store/photography_studio_kits.htm

Cheers, Don

PS. If you are using regular bulbs keep the fabric away from them

With the CF bulbs it doesn't matter, I measured the temperature at 145 degrees F after they were on for half an hour...

rubbertree · Oct 17, 2008

oh yes, I should have clarified, this is for taking product pictures, not to use on people!

Village Idiot · Oct 17, 2008

40w probably isn't going to be near enough.

The modeling lamp on my strobe is 100w and it's no where near the power needed to photograph anything.

Mike_E · Oct 17, 2008

When using continuous lighting what you see is what you get. Try 2 150W bulbs. Then move the softbox in as close as you can. try this in a dark room too.

For a quick and dirty WB shoot a clean white Styrofoam cup in the light you will be using and use that to set your white point in Post.

You also really don't want to mix your lighting. Don't mix tungsten and the new energy saver bulbs for instance, or the standard florescent either.

Use a piece of white foam core poster-board for reflected fill on the other side of your subject- also as close as you can get. Also you can glue some aluminum foil to some cardboard and use that to reflect your main light off the back and side of your subject's head- opposite the side of your main light (you'll want this to just show- it adds life to the hair and definition/separation from the background).

You also will want to use dark/black cloth on the sides and bottom because the spilled light will wash out the shadow detail on your subjects face and also be careful to not let direct light from your main or reflectors shine into your lens.

This should get you a start. Good luck.