Is it possible to take professional pictures at home with home-made lighting systems? If so, how?
kewlbb asked:
I want to be able to take professional pictures at home. I have a good camera and I have a big room and stuff. But how do you set up the lighting and make it look like a studio? Or make the pictures look like its from the studio?
I love taking pictures :]
I want to be able to take professional pictures at home. I have a good camera and I have a big room and stuff. But how do you set up the lighting and make it look like a studio? Or make the pictures look like its from the studio?
I love taking pictures :]
Thankyouu
I found instructions to make your own light box on share.nigmae.net (you will have to search it) but some floodlights aimed backwards onto curved white cardboard works the same as those white umbrellas. get a light meter and find net tips and you should be right [who]
you can use available lighting. that is “sun” that i am referring to. use reflector such as white cloth, paper, board, or even tarps. try different angle when shooting. [who]
There are many ways to set up proper lighting at home.
One would be using diffusers on common lamps to spread the light uniformly. Using halogen spotlights for directional lighting is another good tip. Reflective materials on surfaces you want the light to bounce off is a must.
However there’s a limit to things you can set up at home. Coordinated flash bursts will require an ensemble of flashes linked to your camera, for example.
The limit is your imagination and as for materials, I would ask a friend that knows about interior decorations or architecture. [who]
I wanted to do the same thing a few years ago. Here’s what I did:
1) Take a class in studio lighting techniques. This is critical because of the feedback from the instructor. Also, you can actually see the setups and how they work.
2) Get a couple of books on portrait lighting and studio lighting. These will generally show a variety of setups and the photographs taken with those setups.
3) Get some seamless paper rolls (black, gray, white) and maybe a painted canvas or muslin for backgrounds. The combination of these backgrounds and your lighting setup will give you a wide variety of looks.
4) You’ll need to get some kind of pro strobe setup with light modifiers. This would consist of a power pack and three or four heads, or an alternative would be three or four monolights. But I would not buy this stuff until you take the class.
In addition to the technical side, you probably will want to get a basic sense of the business requirements – in other words, how do you get clients, what will they expect, etc. [who]
There are a series of books by Bill Hurter. They cover all facets of portrait photography, including lighting setups, posing.
Check them out. My local library ahs the whole series. [who]
A professional PORTRAIT is taken by a professional. Yours would be amatuer. Get some training, take some classes, work with a professional. Then ask this question. [who]
I used halogen construction lights with photo umbrellas. Remember studio light is balanced and soft. what you do to
light a subject is either
DIFFUSE -soften light by shining through fabric barrier, forget it if you don’t have a pro rig, can be a fire hazard (been there).
BOUNCE-reflect light onto your subject, works with any reflective material…that is what the umbrellas are for. You point the light at the correct angle into the umbrella and it bounces back onto your subject. DO NOT place the umbrella directly on the light (fire Hazard, been there too). It needs to be at least the length of the umbrella depending how hot your lights are.
FILL- best used for detail light on subject, ex face…use a piece of white foam core to bounce ambient/available light to bounce light up…
Finally look at photos see what the light is doing, where is it coming from…look at Mapplethorpe ( not everybody’s fave) but a master of lighting and Edward Weston, Helmut Newton
OR Take a class….. [who]