Studio lighting.

September 13, 2011
User archive

I have a home studio, it is set up in my garage, I have gradually built up my gear.

I started off using my camera flash on a remote trigger mounted on my tripod, a secondary flash set on "slave". To give differing lighting set ups.

My full time job as an engineer meant I could make mounting brackets to hold umbrellas, as well as supports to hold backdrops. These were 96" wide (double width bolt) lengths of black fabric from a local shop.

I also aquired the end of a roll of 2.5m white clay-coated white paper, this makes an excellent infinity backdrop.

I upgraded my flash to some 300 w/s studio flash units but these proved to be unreliable and were replaced with Lastolite lumen8 400 w/s lights, these have been an excellent investment.

By moving the lights, up or down, angling them to bounce, off black or white surfaces, using soft-boxes, shoot through or bounce-back umbrellas, varying the power of the light, using reflectors or go-betweens the lighting possibilties are infinite.

Using a few props, a desk and chair to represent an office ,or a simple sign yet more options !