Want some advice on studio setup for portrait photography

[sweetypie925]

So I'm fairly new to this and been reading, reading, and done more reading regarding light. I'm very interested in doing some studio photography of children, people, and maternity. I was tired of those mill studios in the mall and want to expand my abilities to studio photography and not sure where to get started as far as equipment. I have been doing a lot of shooting of m kids just using natural light, but it gets frusturating when lighting conditions are not the best and I'm still learning.

So I was interested in buying 1 AB800 the beginner bee kit, a background stand, and maybe experimenting with some fabric before buying muslins or paper yet. My equipment I have right now is my xti, 430ex, 50 1.4 which I love!, a new 70-200 f4L which I haven't used much yet and hope I don't regret buying, and kit lens. I have a cheapo tripod until money gets better. What do you think of this? I would love to have a portrait business in the future and want to invest in equipment that will last me and I won't have to replace any time soon. Any advice is appreciated. Also if anyone else does this type of photography can you give me and words of advice on how you started? Much thanks!

[604Shooter]

I would be interested in the responses you get here cause im interested in a similar idea.

[DaveG]

So I'm fairly new to this and been reading, reading, and done more reading regarding light. I'm very interested in doing some studio photography of children, people, and maternity. I was tired of those mill studios in the mall and want to expand my abilities to studio photography and not sure where to get started as far as equipment. I have been doing a lot of shooting of m kids just using natural light, but it gets frusturating when lighting conditions are not the best and I'm still learning.

So I was interested in buying 1 AB800 the beginner bee kit, a background stand, and maybe experimenting with some fabric before buying muslins or paper yet. My equipment I have right now is my xti, 430ex, 50 1.4 which I love!, a new 70-200 f4L which I haven't used much yet and hope I don't regret buying, and kit lens. I have a cheapo tripod until money gets better. What do you think of this? I would love to have a portrait business in the future and want to invest in equipment that will last me and I won't have to replace any time soon. Any advice is appreciated. Also if anyone else does this type of photography can you give me and words of advice on how you started? Much thanks!

The first thing to say about studio portrait photography is that you'll need at least two flashes that you can control. Two flashes are what allows you to set up lighting ratios. I use a pair of ancient MultiBlitz monolights for these purposes and they work fine.

The basic setup is that you place the Main light at about 45 degrees to one side of the subject. It can go almost anywhere but for classic portraiture this is about right. You need a flash meter to measure the output of this flash, and I'd adjust mine until I got something like f5.6. Then you place the Fill light within 20 degrees of the camera position. I measure the light output of the Fill light until it's almost - but not quite - one stop under the Main, and in this example that would be f4 and a tiny bit. And although the fire storm is about to begin once again, this gives you a very conventional 3:1 lighting ratio. Then I turn on both flashes and measure them and this will give me a shooting exposure of something (in this example) of f5.6 and a half. I shoot at that aperture and then use the histogram to fine tune the exposure.

The base concept here is that you have the Main striking only one half of the subject's face. All by itself it would create a nice highlight side light. But the shadow side of the face would be very dark and would lack detail. Using a Fill light literally fills in (duh ...) the shadow side and since it's under a stop the camera has enough latitude to preserve both the highlight and shadow detail.

So what do you need? First you need two strobes. Your 430 is a fine flash but you'd be reduced to using it in manual (E-TTL won't work here) and I think that it's a situation where you are using an expensive tool to do the work that a cheaper tool will do better.

Obviously you'll need light stands for the strobes and then something to make the light softer like softboxes or the cheaper alternative umbrellas.

A measurement tool like a flash meter is critical. You can get your EXPOSURE using the histogram, but it would be very difficult to set up the lighting ratios without a meter. Sekonic makes some nice ones. I have a Minolta Autometer IVf and it's wonderful. Minolta is gone now and have apparently sold off their meter division to Kenko.

Then you'll need a triggering system. Most strobes will have a built in optical slave so if you can fire one, you can fire them all. Typically a sync cord would be used to fire one of the strobes but there's a potential danger that the power going trough your sync cord could fry the camera. With modern strobes I doubt if that danger is real, but it certainly is with older strobes. I've chosen to use radio slaves but that's a lot of money. You could use your 430 on a low power manual setting to set off the optical slaves in both strobes, and I've done that kind of thing in the past.

Once you have this stuff you can add spice to the soup. A third flash can be used as a hairlight, and a fourth as a background light. These improve the images but they are added AFTER the Main/Fill is taken care of.

The room that you shoot in ideally is big enough so that you can be fairly far away from the subject and they are a meter or more from the backdrop. The ceiling height is important as well. If you can get your lights high then there's going to be less problems with reflections on glasses.

In a home studio you rarely have that kind of shooting space and you will make do. Although I can't make the room bigger I can "increase" the ceiling height by making the subject's stool lower. Obviously there's limit to how short a stool you can use, but I trimmed off the legs of a wooden bar stool to achieve that effect. Now a use a metal fold up stool that is low and that seems to be the standard.

I'd get a decent tripod soon if I was you. This isn't just for portraiture but for everything. A tripod has one job: Keep the camera steady. If it doesn't do that then it's useless. A good quality and relatively inexpensive Manfrotto/Bogen should be fine.

So that's my view of home studio portraiture. I would have been easy to say that you have what you need but you'd quickly find out that you don't.

[skrezyna]

Dave,

Thanks for the advice. Like these other two, I also want to get into portrait photography. My question, would 2 or 3 White Lightnings (x800) be sufficient for studio flashes? http://www.white-lightning.com/x800.html

A strobe is the same as a flash?
Does a portrait photographer ever have a continuous light setup or is it usually flash using umbrellas, softboxes and slaves?

Also, have you found any posts about how to get started with clientel once we feel we are ready to do so? I can only imagine how hard this is to get into and make a living at and I get concerned.

TIA

[xububba]

I am having similar thoughts, as the weather turns, I thought it would be a good time of year to learn more about studio lighting. To that end, I just signed up for a local course to get some hands on instruction, but I will probably learn almost as much by subscribing to this thread!! :)

[HaroldC3]

Dave your post should be stickied or something. Lots of useful info. Thank you

[TMR Design]

Hi sweetypie925,

I was once where you are. The link I'm giving you is an incredible resource with tutorials, diagrams and great information about lighting and portrait lighitng in particular. Scott (lightingman) Smith was a great help to me and many people have found this thread to be very educational.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=251549

[JBaz]

You can actually get away with one studio light and use a reflector or foamcore (white foam board) as fill for simple portraits. You don't really need a flash meter for simple setups like that, but when you start using 3 or more strobes, it would cut your setup time significantly instead of doing all of the math or the guess work. I have the L-358 light meter that I've only used once so far. I do most of photoshoots on the fly, but when I do start to make more complex shoots (4 or more stobes) I'll start to actually sit down and use the meter. It's just that by the time I pull it out and meter the strobes for just 3 of them, I could just do some test shots in the same amount or even less.

You must do your reading on light theory and understand flash photography. There's a lot of math involved when you start doing stuff like this, but once you get more experience, it almost becomes second nature. I may not have the most experience as some, but I'm pretty familiar with my equipment to the point of where I can just analyze the situation, set my aperture, shutter, ISO, flash ratios and distance to where I'd almost get the perfect exposure in the first shot. I even amaze myself when I do that.

But, when you understand the f/stop ratios and light properties, it's really simple and basic math. When you change one variable, you just compensate with another.

[jbdial1515]

TMR...just read most of the thread for the first time. I stopped when I got to about page 10 as it was all I could take right now.

Man is it ever starting to make sense now. That is great info.

[TMR Design]

Hi jbdial1515,

That's great! I know it can be quite a long read but for the most part it stays on track and walks you through the process from start to finish.

You can see that I started with just 1 light and used DIY reflectors to create fill and hair lights. Having many lights at the beginning is nice but at the same time I'm very glad that I learned how to use reflectors.

[DaveG]

You can actually get away with one studio light and use a reflector or foamcore (white foam board) as fill for simple portraits. You don't really need a flash meter for simple setups like that, but when you start using 3 or more strobes, it would cut your setup time significantly instead of doing all of the math or the guess work. I have the L-358 light meter that I've only used once so far. I do most of photoshoots on the fly, but when I do start to make more complex shoots (4 or more stobes) I'll start to actually sit down and use the meter. It's just that by the time I pull it out and meter the strobes for just 3 of them, I could just do some test shots in the same amount or even less.

You must do your reading on light theory and understand flash photography. There's a lot of math involved when you start doing stuff like this, but once you get more experience, it almost becomes second nature. I may not have the most experience as some, but I'm pretty familiar with my equipment to the point of where I can just analyze the situation, set my aperture, shutter, ISO, flash ratios and distance to where I'd almost get the perfect exposure in the first shot. I even amaze myself when I do that.

But, when you understand the f/stop ratios and light properties, it's really simple and basic math. When you change one variable, you just compensate with another.

You may well get a correct overall exposure but you will almost never be able to duplicate the lighting ratio if you don't use a flash meter EVERY TIME. You also may well have something that you like; but I like craft, understanding and repeatability.

I don't agree at all with your differentiation between four lights and three. Like three lights don't need a flash meter while four might. I'd just like to know HOW you'd set up a four light ratio. Just where do the lights go?

A ratio is not the output of the lights/strobes/flashes, but where it falls on the subject. In my example one strobe lights the highlight side of the subjects face, while the fill lights both sides of their face. If there's a one stop difference between the measured amount of light at the subject position then this is a 3:1 lighting ratio. Any additional strobes would have nothing to do with the lighting ratio unless you chose to use two mainlights one on each side of the subject with a fill still at the camera position. I've used that kind of setup a couple of times and while rare I still used my regular setup approach. But for 99% of my portrait lighting it's just two strobes that are part of the ratio set up. Hair lights and background lights have nothing to do with the lighting ratios. So where does that fourth light go in your setup?

F/stops are NOT ratios, at least not in the "lighting ratio" sense, so there's no "f/stop ratio". And how do you change one variable and compensate for it with another IF YOU HAVEN'T MEASURED EITHER?

Sorry I just don't buy it. What I do think is that you are making it up as you go along, and while that may be fine for you I think that it could really mess up others.

[JBaz]

I meant to put a comma between f/stop and ratios.

As long as you use the same variables from previous work. I mean if you know you can get a certain outcome from a certain setup, such as angle, pitch, direction, distance, light modifier, subject location and such on. I find it easy to have repeatability without using a light meter. I've only used 3 strobes to light up a subject once where I used two strobes side by side as the main light and another light off to the side as filler, plus a hairlight and backlight, because of the distance and the loss of light from softboxes. That was the only time I've done it, but it was also the most complex so far. I haven't used more than 5 strobes at a time yet.

[DaveG]

I still think that you are doing too much guessing. If you measured the things then they would be EXACTLY the same every time. Right now you just think that they are. Now this might be OK in a confined studio, where this flash always goes over there, and that flash goes here, but in a location shoot, you'll never know.

Consider this: You are asked to do H&S portraits of one client's employees in two of their locations. With your method you'd get OK exposures, but the shots from the different locations would be different. The lighting ratios would be similar but slightly varied. With my method the shots would be identical. If the client wants all of these shots to be used at the same time - say an annual report, or in an advertisement - then consistency from shot to shot to shot is going to be extremely important to them.

But even in a studio you'll lose the ability to tweak your setup if you don't measure light every time. If I want to make a meaningful change to anything I can usually only deal with one variable at a time. For example, say I use umbrellas rather than soft boxes. I set everything up with a test subject and make some exposures. Now I switch to using the Main light in a soft box. I test the output again and adjust the Main until it gives me the same exposure as the umbrella. Then I take some more test images. Now I can compare the two different setups with the confidence that the only variable is the umbrella/softbox. There is no variation of exposure which might cloud my evaluation of the different light modifiers so I can make subtle adjustments.

As a final comment. I was at a friends house the other night and one of her small daughters was feeling sick. My friend is a major league cardiologist and a full professor at a medical school. Her first response to her daughter's illness was to stick a $10.00 thermometer in her mouth. She could have touched her forehead with the back of her hand and she could have made a pretty good evaluation from that. However she chose to make decisions based on facts not assumptions, and that has been my approach as well.

[JBaz]

The photo illustrations I do are in a studio setting so not too much location, yet. I do more product photography than portraits so it's a bit different. I do meter when doing products to keep them consistent for the marketing collaterials, but then again, the products aren't waiting on me and they don't bitch after sitting down on a chair for 5 mins... :p

I use my studio ring light on location as a mobile flash head so I can't meter when I do stuff like that. Everything then has to be on the fly and I have to take in account from experience and assumptions because I can only take maybe one or two shots when doing similar stuff to simple P&S. It really boils down to if you have time and if you can do it. Usually I never do.

I might use my meter more now that I just bought some pocket wizards and don't have to use sync cables, which is the one main reason why I don't hassle with the meter in the first place with portraits. But you do prove your point very well and I respect that.

[mcs550]

I think the beginner kit is probably and excellent start. I went even alot cheaper than that. I posted some examples in this thread yesterday. The one thing I forgot to mention is that I used a gold 42" reflector to my Grandaughters left and about 4' away.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=385140

[DaveG]

"It really boils down to if you have time and if you can do it. Usually I never do."

Read my signature.

[JBaz]

so true. Just found out I have to do 4 product shots tomorrow and the advertisement that uses will need to be done by Friday afternoon... And I also have to do the design of the ad. Another thing on the list to do.