Whats your studio setup?

[Phranquey]

And what do all of you that have a studio in house do with it. Take pics of family, friends, or have people come over?

Mine packs up in a hard case with wheels, so it can go out of the "studio".

 

[DeadEye]

And what do all of you that have a studio in house do with it. Take pics of family, friends, or have people come over?

People come over. Its on the ground level and I live above so no one is through my home. It has its own enterance.Restroom,makeup/dressing room and parking are in the works

 

[craig]

The new studio set up. 13 x 26 room with 10 foot ceiling painted flat white .Two 5 x 6 windows with shutter on inside to block out ALL light if wanted. Speedotron lights. Four 102's and a 105 with a 2401 pack. Slew of stands some with casters and counterweighted booms. Backdrops are stemless paper.Snoot, grids , beauty dish .umbrellas, soft box, gels ,etc. Its a never ending project!!

Yay! Big up for shooting Speedotron. I also have the 2401. Used to have 3 (103) heads till I killed 2 heads opening the garage door. Long story. They just need the flash bulbs. At any rate that monster is a work horse. I think these days the Speedotron story falls on deaf ears. Everyone wants Alien Bees totaling a whopping 800 ws. I also use a full Tungsten set up. Lowell Omni. Great for product shots.

Tell us what you will be shooting. Also include the style you like to shoot. Unlike cameras you will probably only by studio gear once. Save your pennies and get the best.


Love & Bass

 

[LynziMarie]

PHOTOGRAPHIC LIGHTING

I got the four light strobe set up from these guys,
and I'm quite happy, they work great and aren't super expensive.
Customer service is actually great, and they've got endless options

 

[jlykins]

People come over. Its on the ground level and I live above so no one is through my home. It has its own enterance.Restroom,makeup/dressing room and parking are in the works

This is about the perfect setup for an in home studio. I tried to convert my dining room into a studio, and the wife about killed me. She doesn't want people in and out of my house like that. Oh well. I guess I'll just keep my stuff mobile for now.

 

[JerryPH]

And what do all of you that have a studio in house do with it. Take pics of family, friends, or have people come over?

What do you mean? They do whatever they want... lol Likely all of the above and more. I even plan to have a few people from the strobist club come on over along with a couple models one day and just have fun.

Mostly it is for me to play with, nothing more... it's all about the learning, practicing and most of all, the fun.

 

[Mystwalker]

I am reading many people "dialing down" their studio strobes.
Does a 1000W strobe dialed down to 1/4 equal 250W?

I see Flashpoint 150W at Adorama for $99.95 ... if pros are dialing down their strobes to 1/4 power or more, I'm thinking the 150W is similar to a 600W dialed down?

For my non-pro usage, this price is perfect. Can use money saved to get LRII to get rid of WB issues mentioned above.

 

[table1349]

I am reading many people "dialing down" their studio strobes.
Does a 1000W strobe dialed down to 1/4 equal 250W?

I see Flashpoint 150W at Adorama for $99.95 ... if pros are dialing down their strobes to 1/4 power or more, I'm thinking the 150W is similar to a 600W dialed down?

For my non-pro usage, this price is perfect. Can use money saved to get LRII to get rid of WB issues mentioned above.

The problem comes if you have a time where you need more power. You can always turn them down if you have too much power, but you can't can't turn them up beyond their max power.

 

[JerryPH]

It is not often that I need to properly expose a subject at F/22 on a bright summer day in direct sunlight... I find that even with a very low end 200 W/s studio setup, I am needing less light than they give me at minimum settings and I usually end up using the SB-600s at 1/32nd or 1/64th or the SB-800 at 1/64th or 1/128th for the nuances that I need more often than I need the "big guns".

Every photographer has different needs, and I am sure that one day I will wish I had multiple 1200 W/s strobes, but I just haven't run into that need just yet.

I guess it's quality not quantity for me.

2 light stands with silver reflective umbrellas set 40-45 degrees camera left and right with 2 SB-600s set to 1/4 power each. That's all I needed to get 4 people properly exposed. Now, I need the lead guitarist to stop drinking and puking on the set and I'll be fine!

 

[kami]

Jerry, I'm a beginner who has only been using bounce flash as well as using the Gary Fong diffuser for a few months now.

Can you advise me on what basic equipment I'd need at home for creating unique home portraits? I was thinking of getting another SB-600, 2 stands and a couple of umbrellas. I'd like to start with what you've used in the above photos, what type and brand of umbrellas, and the backdrop material as well.

Thanks in advance.

 

[JerryPH]

kami, join the flickr strobist group and read and learn from Strobist and you will see that you pretty much already have all you need and can do some incredible pictures with one stand/umbrella and one SB-600. As I said... quality, not quantity. I have 6 light sources available to me. I rarely need more than 3 light sources except for huge rooms or a large group of people. The first step is getting that light source OFF camera!

It is not the equipment, its the person behind the camera.

 

[tsaraleksi]

I tend to squeeze the watts out of my strobes the most when I use them as location lighting more than anything else-- nothing like two 800 w/s lights to freeze your action.

 

[JerryPH]

Considering the fact that the average flash is in thousands of a second, neither high nor lower powered flashes freeze action greatly more than the other, though at full power, flashes will have a shorter duration than when at lower power levels.

However, an "action shot" taken with a flash that cycled at 1/3,000th of a second vs 1/15,000th of a second will give you the same level of frozen action effect. At these levels, shutter speed will have more to do with reducing blur than flash speed.

Strobes used to freeze the jumping action here. We can see the body well in focus, but the legs are blurred with this picture taken at 1/200th (lighting was 2 Nikon SB-600s set to 1/4 power):

Yet when ISO and shutter speeds are raised to ISO 3200 and 1/500th, this blurring completely disappears as displayed by this much more aggressive and faster spinning jump kick perfectly captured without any motion blur (NO lighting beyond ambient was used in this picture!):

There are times to use flash to freeze a moment, but faster moving objects will still have blur until you raise shutter speeds. That is where having a camera with a higher sync speed comes in handy unless your ambient is very low (or as suggested, your apertures are VERY small and strobes strong enough to overpower the conditions).

2 ways to do the same thing.

 

[Neuner]

Of course he's not taking a serious photo but still the zoom lens with the onboard flash popped up makes me laugh - especially with the topic of this thread...

 

[JerryPH]

Of course he's not taking a serious photo but still the zoom lens with the onboard flash popped up makes me laugh - especially with the topic of this thread...

LOL... no he was NOT taking pictures at all. This is one of the photographers that came to our last strobist meet. We came early and the models came (fashoinably) late, so in the meantime, we grabbed this guy and had some fun. I used him to test out my lighting setup and get a feel for the place.

He was an amazingly good sport by posing for all of us and a darn good martial artist!