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Shooting in a small room with limited equipment
Ok, so let me set this up for you. I'm shooting in a small room, 12x12. 3 ofwhite walls, 1 red accent wall. All I have available is dslr w/lenses, a single shoe mount flash, ceiling light, and and whatever else I can mcguiver out of office supplies. How would you go about doing this? Sep 07 05 04:13 pm Link What are you shooting? Sep 07 05 04:57 pm Link What are you shooting ? Lens focal lengths ? Headshot should work fine. Use miror and take the pictures off the mirror (this should double your distance). You can bounce the flash off the ceiling. Sep 07 05 05:00 pm Link I shoot in small spaces a lot... I take my strobe off the hotshoe and use a short sych cord... bouncing light off an off-white wall can make a small light seem quite big... I am happy with my results David Sep 07 05 05:09 pm Link Hide in the corner and shoot them against the red wall (blood won't show up) Opppps...this is a photo shoot...my mistake, never mind  Sep 07 05 05:20 pm Link shooting people, full length when possible, but mostly arsty fartsy head and upper torso shots. most often then not shooting myself with the self timer, thank god for digital. anyways. for some reason this flash doesn't have a port for a sync cord, because I'd thought of that. I have no idea why it doesn't, and didn't even bother to look for it when I bought the flash, since I pretty much took it for a given that it would be there. My mistake. So any ideas about how to bounce and aim the flash without removing it from the shoe? Sep 07 05 05:23 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: I'd pretty much forget the flash (you can get a cable for it if you want to use it off-camera but that's another thread). If you want to do studio work, you're going to need at least one strobe. You can get an Alienbees B400 for about $250. That'll work well with an umbrella and let you get pretty good shots. If you have the entire room to work with, that's plenty large enough for 9' seamless paper, or you can go with the 53" width if you keep the subject closer to the background. Sep 07 05 06:00 pm Link http://www.pbase.com/digitalcmh/jade012905 I shot this entirely in her dorm room. Less than a 12x12 and her dormmate was in the room studying on her laptop at the time we shot. I did have a studio flash though. Sep 07 05 06:04 pm Link well, i'm trying to keep from buying anything. I think I may be able to ghetto rig some tungsten hot lights, but no strobes other than what I've got. Paul, I seem to recognize your name. Do you post on www.photo.net also? Sep 07 05 06:04 pm Link Yesss... Bounce is going to be your friend for this shoot... I would bring some fome core bord or something to maybe use as a fill... I would skip the hot lights.. It seems like you dont have much space for them and you dont want to get burned! Another thing is the slow shutter speeds.... Sep 07 05 06:30 pm Link Small spaces and limited equipment is my life right now. Hell, I wish I had as much space and equipment to work with as you do. I'm in an 8x12 room with clip on work lights. But, I'm happy having that much most of the time...and I've gotten some good shots. Sep 07 05 07:03 pm Link Don Brodie wrote: how slow a shutter would you use? I don't have a handheld meter, unfortunatly. And on apature priority it sets the shutter to 1/60 when using a flash, but I think that's probably too fast. Sep 07 05 07:03 pm Link also, how would you recommend using the foam board, which I have plenty of, for fill/bounce? Sep 07 05 07:06 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: I used to. What a memory you have. Too many forums these days. Sep 07 05 07:08 pm Link Paul Ferrara wrote: haha! so I'm not crazy. I think you've critiqued a few of my photos Sep 07 05 07:09 pm Link With a DSLR you should not have to worry much about color temps. You can use hot lights or flash. I prefer hot and available light. Just because I am not talented enough to use strobes effectively. Sep 07 05 07:27 pm Link London Drugs carries a cheap $22.00 Optical Slave Trigger. Set your onboard flash on the DSLR to it's lowest setting and it will fire your flash unit. The trigger has a hotshoe mount on it plus a tripod mount so you can setup your flash on a tripod. I plan on getting a few of these myself as I have flashes that don't swivel or rotate, so a tripod will do this for me. I am in the same situation you are in, shooting in small spaces. My main issue with small spaces is depth of field so I don't have to edit pictures later to blur out the background. But the idea to use a mirror to double the distance is a great idea. How much light do you lose with a mirror? Will it lower f-stops any? Sep 07 05 11:50 pm Link I shoot in a pretty small space. I can't do much in the way of full body, but I do fine with closeups, and abstract nudes. For lighting, I just use a desk lamp or two, or a halogen work light. Sep 08 05 02:56 pm Link bouncing a flash or photographing through a mirror will loose ( on chrome) 1 to 1 1/5 stops. You loose it due to distance of light from the subject. And probably the best soft light from a mcgyver lighting set up is 1 or 2 front Kick lights low... and bouce the strongest light off of the largest piece of white board you can find. Be careful with the front kick lights..... it takes a bit of testing but when you have it mastered its got a beautiful touch to lighting.... If your shooting digital... buy flourescent lights.... low f/stop but nice even lighting. Just a thought Sep 08 05 04:04 pm Link A 12'x12' room should be okay for portraits. My shooting area is only slightly larger than that and the only problem I get is from the low ceiling, which is only about 9' high. I can't place my strobes as high as I'd like, and I can't shoot upward from a low angle without getting the top of the background and the ceiling in the shot. For a small room I think an auxiliary flash used as a slave would work well too. Sep 09 05 03:19 pm Link For fill effect set the white foam board on the left and right of the model out of camera view. Bring it out as far as you can and widen it as you move it outwards. The light will bounce around real good if its really white foam and the white wall. You didnt mention the camera that i noticed but I use the D70 and that has "Commander" mode. Maybe your camera has that? If your flash works with that you have a off camera flash. Cheap way for what you already have is to get the foam board set up and have the model far enough away from the wall to set up a light (no shade for more light) behind her for backlighting. Your flash will work as fill at this point on the model. You will need the backlight to minimize harsh shadows since you will be close. This idea is kinda the same as utilizing a long hallway painted white, try to set up the foam the same way, the light will bounce better. As wide as you want at the closest point towards you, narrower at the closest point where the model will be standing but out of camera view. Another idea is shooting her in the area of the corner where its white/white, the light will bounce there also. Get a nice chair and have her pose in/on/around that, tall bar chair for body shots and maybe a stool for sit down shots. Just some ideas but they may help Sep 09 05 03:39 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: place the reflector at the oposit end of your light scorce. ex if you are bouncing off the model's right wall, place reflector on models left. treat it as another light scorce about -1 stops or greater. the distance between the reflector and the model will determin the f stop diffrence. i would say you are looking at about a shutter speed of 1/30 if you are luckey however i have no way to judge. if you want more tips drop me a message... Sep 09 05 03:57 pm Link Just a thought here, but what about making a white light box? Say 18" x 36" and putting a flourescent light inside of it. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I've got it in my head. How much light do you think this would provide? Enough to shoot handheld? right now I shoot from the tripod, which I feel really limits me. Oh, and no onboard flash, so I can't slave like that. and I'm too broke to buy another flash unit right now. Sep 09 05 08:23 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: Not a chance. You probably can't shoot handheld even with hotlights. It seems to me that you should maybe stick to existing light shots until you can afford to buy some gear. Sep 09 05 09:55 pm Link don't forget the model :-) Sep 09 05 10:04 pm Link Paul Ferrara wrote: Paul is right. You need to dig in the pocket and invest a little money in some equipment. You can find these used somtimes if you search the web. Sep 09 05 10:18 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: it's possible to get pretty decent shots using what you've got... it's what i started with... except the room i was shooting in, and still shoot in, is only 9x9 but with mirrors on one side and a full length floor to ceiling window opposite the mirrors... Sep 09 05 10:58 pm Link I didn't see ceiling height there. Maybe I missed it. My studio is 12x16.5, with 12 foot ceiling. That 16.5 foot length means I can use an 85mm lens with a standing 5'9" model, my head against the back wall. The 12 foot height really opens up a lot of possibilities. All walls and ceiling are white, the floor is as close to photo grey as I could get mixed. Instead of soft boxes I bounce hot light off the walls or ceiling and to kill reflections I hang duvatine or black paper. That makes the space flexible without having too much hardware taking up floor space. But most of my shooting is in hotel rooms when I travel. Those range from huge suites to tiny European spaces and the occasional Motel 6. For smaller spaces I use a normal 50mm lens (75mm on medium format) and take care to use the distortion and depth of focus well. Full body work is easy, provided the model doesn't have to be vertical, and the tightness of some of the spaces really adds to the intimacy of the images (and of the shoot). -Don Sep 10 05 08:30 am Link [image]http://www.shutterbook.com/photos/23025507950_4411.jpg[image] THis is what I did in my 20 x 20 ft studio. Sep 11 05 07:02 am Link AscendantPhotography wrote: https://modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pic_id=4321ef792622a Sep 11 05 03:23 pm Link Jonathan Lobb wrote: If you have a window with natural light the space would work well. I just did a nude shoot, in the storage half of my basement, and got some great shots by a dirty window. Sep 11 05 09:22 pm Link i would use hot lights, even those $10 halogens from home depot, bounce them off a wall. or set them up behind the model for high key, my images of kimberly and nicole were shot that way, just remember to custom white balance so they dont turn out too orange, actually not one image in my port was shot with a strobe of any kind, all hot lights. Jonathan Lobb wrote: Sep 17 05 09:19 pm Link i made a homemade flouresent softbox that works ok, not great but ok, here is what i did: i took a strip outlet thing 3 feet long that had plug-ins every 6 inches (actually i used two) plugged in a light socket into each of these plugs screwed in a 100 watt spiral flouresent into each of these. put in a plywood box painted white. 1200 watts of light uses only 200 watts of power i handhold all the time but i have image stabilizer lens the images of lilli were taken with this light Jonathan Lobb wrote: Sep 17 05 09:34 pm Link |
