A friend has asked me about a decent, not-too-expensive lighting set up for his son who is learning photography.
He intends to do some portrait and flower work, inside.
He asked specificlly about a set-up ike this on EBay:
Item number: 170594745069
- since I'm not a portrait person, I thought I'd seek the collective knowledge in this forum!
What do some of you guys use for lighting/ lighting set-ups inside?
Sorry but I don't use artificial light - well, other than the scanned images. I'll be interested in seeing what responses you get. As I think about the images I see here though, most folks in the gallery are not using artificial light.
Sandy, I don't do portraits much any more but did for quite a while. My light setup was three light stands, two umbrellas and three flashes. My main flash bounced into a 24" umbrella, a secondary flash (slave triggered of course) also bounced into a 24" umbrella and a third smaller flash (also slave triggered) to light the background or selectively backlight the hair. I used a variety of placements of the flashes depending on what I wanted to achieve lighting wise. The main flash could be set from full power to 1/16 power in one stop increments. My secondary flash output was fixed and I controlled the amount of light for fill by simply moving the flash closer or further away. The third smaller flash was also adjustable in one stop increments. I hope this helps.
The kit on eBay is not name brand stuff. I could only guess at the quality of the gear. It's really cheap, so your friend isn't putting too much money at risk. A cautionary analogy: You can get a tripod for you camera for $35 at Walmart, and it may be suitable for some folks for some uses, but if you're serious about photography, you'll be upgrading pretty soon.
Off camera lighting will definitely give more pleasing results that an on-camera strobe. The lights in the eBay kit are continuous lights rather than strobes. While there's nothing wrong with continuous lighting, it's the exception rather than the rule for portrait lighting. One nice thing about continuous lighting is that you can see the modeling. If he would like to use hot-shoe flashes with those light stands and umbrellas, he would need to buy different umbrella brackets.
Discussion
6 repliesHe intends to do some portrait and flower work, inside.
He asked specificlly about a set-up ike this on EBay:
Item number: 170594745069
- since I'm not a portrait person, I thought I'd seek the collective knowledge in this forum!
What do some of you guys use for lighting/ lighting set-ups inside?
Thanks -
Sandy
Sorry but I don't use artificial light - well, other than the scanned images. I'll be interested in seeing what responses you get. As I think about the images I see here though, most folks in the gallery are not using artificial light.
pat
Since the first of the year, I've been learning everything I can about studio lighting. I've set up a studio and I've $pent a bunch of money on lighting equipment. (You can check out my handiwork here in our Member Lounge [shameless promotion]: http://www.naturephotographers.net/imagecritique/bbs.cgi?a=vm&mr=64368&CGISESSID=fcadaa3302fecc64bf0f6aa6ce532d7d&u=6255
The kit on eBay is not name brand stuff. I could only guess at the quality of the gear. It's really cheap, so your friend isn't putting too much money at risk. A cautionary analogy: You can get a tripod for you camera for $35 at Walmart, and it may be suitable for some folks for some uses, but if you're serious about photography, you'll be upgrading pretty soon.
Off camera lighting will definitely give more pleasing results that an on-camera strobe. The lights in the eBay kit are continuous lights rather than strobes. While there's nothing wrong with continuous lighting, it's the exception rather than the rule for portrait lighting. One nice thing about continuous lighting is that you can see the modeling. If he would like to use hot-shoe flashes with those light stands and umbrellas, he would need to buy different umbrella brackets.
For a quick education in off-camera lighting, a place to start is The Strobist http://strobist.blogspot.com/
Sandy