Help me setup a small studio.

[Sleeping Martyr]

Hi all.

Well, i've decided to turn one of the bedrooms in my house into a small studio that would be great for photos of things like my guitars as well as some fun portraits. The problem is.. where do i begin?

I have a Digital Rebel and also a 75-300 zoom lense. I'd like some advice on purchasing some lighting, backdrops, as well as what i'm going to need for hooking up to an external flash system, an umbrella of some sort.

I'm certain i'll need a couple of lenses as well with a lower f-stop for low light applications. Probably some softboxes and umbrella lighting.

and to sound like the typical n00b post i'll finish by saying... "HELP!"

[cactusclay]

I don't know how big a room you have or how much money, so I'll asume that it's not a huge room and you don't have a lot of money. You can use bed sheets for back drops and hang them from bailing wire streached between two nails. Alen B's are fairly inexpensive, or you could get a 550 or 580 flash and a couple of 430's, or even better get one of those infared deals that mounts to the hot shoe and activates the other flashes. Or, you could get or make a reflector and use the window as your main light source and the reflector as your fill. If you use strobes or canon flashes you will probably need some light stands and for a inexpensive portrait lens, for a small studio, you could get the 50 1.8.

[Sleeping Martyr]

wel, lets say about an 8'x8' area.. and i'm figuring under $2k. YEah, i'd like to have the infrared remote to actviate the other flashes.. I'll probably be blocking out the window when it's in use. Also, i'll need a decent main light source.

[cactusclay]

I bought a alzo 2000 constant light head in a kit with a softbox a reflector and a hair light for just over a grand. I like it and you get to see exactly what you get. The light is balanced at 5200 kelvin and has a built in fan, so it doesn't put out as much heat as things like tungston hot lights. Check out: sell it on the net. They have other lighting setups as well and give lighting examples.

[Sleeping Martyr]

the 2 light kit seems like it would work well. these are just constant lights with no external flash it seems, correct? it would appear i may not even need an external flash because these kits seem to provide enough light.

[cactusclay]

For a 8x8 room, one light would be more than enough. I use one light in a 12x20 room and it does the trick.

[cactusclay]

Wopps, I missed the first question, yes they are constant and there is no flash, of coarse you could add a flash if you want, just set your custom white balance to make sure colors come out right.

[wolf]

You can't go wrong with the Alien Bees (http://www.alienbees.com/digi.html). All you need to trigger them is an inexpensive hot shop adapter to trigger one strobe, the other will trigger in slave mode. You could use another two light stands with a piece 1/2 electrcal conduit pipe between them for a backdrop stand.

$680.00 for the set up with B400's
$790.00 for the set up with B800's

For an extra $110.00 I would recommend the B800's at twice the power if needed for location shooting sometime in the future.