Any photographer who is starting out would love to have a home studio which is set up in an unused room in the house or the maybe even the garage. However, handy things around you can be the initial expense which cannot be completely avoided.
Like it or not, there are some basic needs for setting up a home studio. The most important of them being space. I would look at a room, which has at least one big window facing the north for good light. Some of the most amazing portraits can be shot using purely window light. The size of your room should be at least around 350 square feet. The recommended height would be about 7 to 8 feet to enable good portrait work. So try and convert the biggest room in your house into a home studio.
It is also good to account for length when creating your home studio. The farther away you can put the camera from your subject, the better it is for composition and lighting. Also keep in mind that you should keep your subject at least three feet from the background to avoid unwanted shadows. Ideally, I would prefer the room to be painted white or black. If you have a colored wall in your studio, chances are that you will get a color tone in your pictures is very high. My preference is black or grey as it will never bounce off stray light back at your subject and will give you better control over your lighting condition.
These days, one cannot think of starting off with studio photography without having a certain amount of equipment in terms of lights, cameras, lenses and accessories. You can buy necessary equipment in whatever budget you may have. The concept of a budget does exist but the bottomline is that there is always stuff available in whatever money you want to put into it. If you don’t limit expenses at the start, you will fall into a trap where there is no limit to what you can buy. The cost of the abovementioned items can even run into lakhs if you don’t limit it at the start.
However, there are ways of achieving similar results by minimizing costs. In this article, we will throw light on some inexpensive lighting tips and tricks for portrait photography in your home studio.
How much stuff do you really need?
You can have a set of 6 lights and all different sizes of softboxes, umbrellas etc. But knowing how much equipment you really need to start off is half the battle won. I believe in the adage ‘less is more’. I would notmally shoot with one key light during any shoot and then add a background light or a back cross light depending on what the situation calls for. Honestly speaking, if you are starting off in photography, you could use just one main light, a soft box, two to three stands, three to four styrofoam sheets as reflectors, three to four cutters (styrofoam sheets covered in black card paper) to cut unnecessary light and half a dozen clamps (really inexpensive ones).
The main element of your portrait lighting setup is the key light. A key light is the most powerful light source in comparison to your other lights. So having a light that emits more power than what is necessary will make your light more worthwhile. Look at the Elinchrome D-lite series or a cheaper option would be a Prolinchrome 500 or a Prolinchrome 23. I would strongly say one light is really enough to start off with mainly because I did the same.
Although a hard light coming directly from the flash can be used to create crisper images with interesting shadows, it would be a good idea to have a softbox to diffuse this light. If budget is a constraint, get your local carpenter to make a wooden frame of 1m x 1m and tape gateway paper on this wooden frame. Clamp this on one of the extra stands to diffuse light coming from your flash. Alternately, a table lamp with a 100W bulb can also be used with a gateway sheet stuck onto a photoframe.
The problem here is that you would get a yellow cast on your image like you would get when you use tungsten light so color balancing is of paramount importance. Also the table lamp would become a continuous source of light, which will tell you exactly how the light is falling on your subjects face as against a flash. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.
Having said this, I still maintain that using a softbox will give you flattering portraits. Soft boxes come in many sizes, and anything larger than four feet by three feet is very effective for both group and close up photographs. Keep in mind that the larger the softbox, the softer the light. Use the Styrofoam sheets to fill in light in the shadow areas wherever needed. This will in a way replace your secondary light, which you might use as a fill light.
I would optionally introduce a backlight to separate my subject from the background but the importance of its use is very relative. Traditionally a backlight would also be used to remove shadows from the background, which will be cast owing to your key light.
For a third light, imagine a situation where you are shooting a black haired model on a black background. Chances are very high that your models head will blend into the background. In this case, you might want to add a directional light from the back cross. This light is also referred to as the ‘hair light’ or the edge light or the shoulder light. Going minimalist again, you could clamp a styrofoam sheet on one of the light stands and keep in behind the shoulder of your model which will boost in some extra light for the hair.
You could just use one key light for your portrait or then have a combination of a key and background light or the key and shoulder light or a combination of all three.
There you have it. Your inexpensive studio right at home. Send us some photos you shot with this.
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