What kind of light for home studio portrait?

ymc226

ymc226

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I'm interested in taking portraits of my children, nothing professional.

Looking at the B&H website regarding Smith-Victor lighting kits (they seem reasonably priced), I am uncertain what types of kit I should consider. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Smith-Victor Kits&ci=15293&N=4291216824+4294205295

There are tungsten, quartz, lights with umbrella reflectors . . . so many choices to boggle the mind.

Just how many lights do I need and what type?
 
Get a simple flash, and bounce it off the ceiling at 45 degrees, will work just fine.
This is an example:

1448603439_9528c77673_b.jpg
 
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I would start with daylight balanced lights rather than tungsten so you can mix it with available light. Get cheap monolight kit. Since you seem to be looking to spend around $700 maybe this Elichrom D-Lite set is a good start?
Also get yourself some background stand and some seamless paper backgrounds in your desired colors.

But you don't actually need flashes to do nice formal portraits. Get a background stand, a white seamless, set it up outside on an overcast day and do some Avedon style B&W portraits.
 
1 Don't mix lighting, at least to begin with. Shoot all tungsten or all daylight or all flash.

2 Builders' drop cloths are a cheaper, easier alternative to seamless paper, which is clinical and dull.

3 On-camera flash (bounced or not) is incredibly limited

4 B+W removes concerns about mixed light in environmental portraits

5 http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subscription/ps portrait lens light.html

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
1 Don't mix lighting, at least to begin with. Shoot all tungsten or all daylight or all flash.

2 Builders' drop cloths are a cheaper, easier alternative to seamless paper, which is clinical and dull.

3 On-camera flash (bounced or not) is incredibly limited

4 B+W removes concerns about mixed light in environmental portraits

5 http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subscription/ps portrait lens light.html

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

I have to strongly disagree on 2. In my opinion builders' drop cloths or any kind of cloth (other than black velvet type) is incredibly cheesy. Seamless paper looks neither clinical nor dull. It just looks nice and simple. And it's not really expensive at all.
I also don't see a problem in mixing lighting as long as it's all the same light temperature.
I agree about 3 and 4.
 
My Opinion, tungsten lighting is almost worthless unless you're shooting video. You can make a decent portrait with it, but you'll be down around 1/8 to 1/15 a second once you've softened your main light. You'll need the halogen ones, 500 or 600 watts each. I'm not speaking from experience, I abandoned the Idea of using this type of lighting once i took a few meter readings off the ones I had. I would look into those cheap monolights with modeling lights. Three, a big softbox, big umbrella, stands and a flashmeter would be a good place to start.

An example, there are others...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/541984-REG/Westcott_150_Strobelite_Monolight_150.html
 
What I did year's back:

1) Bought a couple of used Vivitar 283 flash units

2) Bought two umbrellas and tripods.

3) I bounce the flashes into the umbrellas. I calculate exposure with my hand held meter, a Gossen Luna F, which has a flash meter option.

I bought these years back so have no idea what everything cost, but I do know it wasn't much. I get excellent results with both B&W and color.

Jim B.
 
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Ranchu said:
My Opinion, tungsten lighting is almost worthless unless you're shooting video. You can make a decent portrait with it, but you'll be down around 1/8 to 1/15 a second once you've softened your main light.
REG/Westcott_150_Strobelite_Monolight_150.html[/url]
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There are some advantages to tungsten lighting. This is the type of lighting which was used for years, before electronic flash took over. People made home-portraits with tungsten lamps, even with Kodachrome A at ASA(ISO) 16.

First, they give WYSIWYG lighting schemes. No need to guess where and how the flash lit the subject, as would be with camera flash units like the Vivitar 283 without modelling lights, or if the flash burst did light the way the modelling light showed it.

Second, they don't require special meters. The onboard camera meter can be used. Flash needs special light meters. There are inexpensive versions of these meters though.

Third, they are less expensive than flash.

The inexpensive, 150WS monolights, or camera flashes, used with umbrellas would give motion stopping exposure times. But their burst is not too much- about f/2.8- f/4 with umbrellas is typical at ISO 100.
 
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Ranchu said:
My Opinion, tungsten lighting is almost worthless unless you're shooting video. You can make a decent portrait with it, but you'll be down around 1/8 to 1/15 a second once you've softened your main light. You'll need the halogen ones, 500 or 600 watts each. I'm not speaking from experience, I abandoned the Idea of using this type of lighting once i took a few meter readings off the ones I had. I would look into those cheap monolights with modeling lights. Three, a big softbox, big umbrella, stands and a flashmeter would be a good place to start.

An example, there are others...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/541984-REG/Westcott_150_Strobelite_Monolight_150.html
Click to expand...
Depends very much on what your shooting with, high iso with digital makes such a big difference to what you can do with tungsten, plus the control of WB. I'm trying to teach myself studio lighting and I find flash such a hard light, I'll post this example of the sort of light I was after, direct but not harsh, this was shot with a Bowens kit, similar to the Elinchrome, but I was only using the modeling lamp which is only a 150 watt bulb. Two lights, one on the background and one with a beauty dish, but i don't think I could get the same quality of light with flash, i might be wrong, maybe I need to diffuse it more, but with the high iso's available on newer cameras, tungsten is an option...R

Patty by fatbobbyrab, on Flickr
 
ZorkiKat said:
There are some advantages to tungsten lighting. This is the type of lighting which was used for years, before electronic flash took over. People made home-portraits with tungsten lamps, even with Kodachrome A at ASA(ISO) 16.

First, they give WYSIWYG lighting schemes. No need to guess where and how the flash lit the subject, as would be with camera flash units like the Vivitar 283 without modelling lights, or if the flash burst did light the way the modelling light showed it.

Second, they don't require special meters. The onboard camera meter can be used. Flash needs special light meters. There are inexpensive versions of these meters though.

Third, they are less expensive than flash.

The inexpensive, 150WS monolights, or camera flashes, used with umbrellas would give motion stopping exposure times. But their burst is not too much- about f/2.8- f/4 with umbrellas is typical at ISO 100.
Click to expand...

I'm a big fan of continuous lighting and a still life photographer I assist for uses almost exclusively tungsten balanced KinoFlo and Arri lights. For non-moving, heat resistent subjects it's a wonderful solution and the tungsten balanced Arrilights are a lot cheaper than HMIs.

That being said, I have to agree with Ranchu, tungsten lights are not the best choice for portraits. They are usually quite low in output, they get hot (makes subjects sweat) and you really have to darken out the room so you get no other light mixed in. Besides, if you're going to get low cost tungsten lights you might aswell just get some decent monolights and use the modeling light as hot lights when you need it.
 
All good points, ZorkiKat and bobbyrab. I found it very limiting, I had a D200 at the time, but I do agree that the look is appealing. Part of it was I didn't want to throw a ton of light at people, and it seemed that that was required.
 
You can also DIY your lights. I've made a few when I was starting studio photography. And a few years ago, I made my own "kinoflo" using 8 40W fluorescent tubes and electronic ballasts. The electronic ballast is preferred because it doesn't cause the tubes to flicker like the mechanical ones. The choice of tube is also important- some have better colour rendering than others, and the suitable ones can only be found through trial and error.

142710387.jpg


And here is how it lights:

142710384.jpg


140801735.jpg


This rig is better appreciated in digital media; the more flexible ISO and colour correction settings in cameras make this light's use more efficient.
 
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You can get cheep usable strobes off that auction site, with stands and umbrellas it should cost less than £100, or whatever it is in dollars. They are not the best lights in the world but they do the job rather well. Do not however buy the softboxes from there they are c..p, though you can get an umbrella box that is ok. Also look on strobist as there is a lot of info there. You could get away with a pair of flashes on stands if you have them, the important thing is to get the flash off camera. Flash lighting is not rocket science and is a lot simpler than it first seems.
 
I went through the same choices. Ended up with (3) ancient 285 vivitars and some knock-off pocket wizards, figuring they are more flexible and be used anywhere. Only thing I'd do differently is get the true PWs.

It's very nice to just position the lights around the room, 2 stands and a softbox/umbrella or 2 and you're made in a small, inexpensive package that can 'go outside' for long range fill flash if you ever need it.

More importantly, a DSLR is the best learning tool to play with all the variables that you will encounter. (Then go to film.)

Alternatively, if you're set on a studio kit, I'd just get a used 500w novotron kit from Ebay.

- Charlie
 
ZorkiKat said:
Each type of lighting (daylight window/tungsten/flash) has its own advantages.

Daylight coming through large windows is cheapest- minimum setup, and often only a secondary reflector is needed:

The typical brolly or softbox + flash setup will give even soft lighting. Kinder on complexions, since skin textures tend to be suppressed.

Tungsten is best for focused lighting- strong defined shadows and hot highlights. Not so easily done with flash:


Fluorescent lighting is fine too. This was lit with a DIY fixture, arranged in a ring-light type layout:
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Of course any type of lighting has its pros and cons. However, I think we have to keep a few things apart here. 'Tungsten' is a color balance, not a specific piece of lighting gear. Lighting gear for photography (and video) usually comes either tungsten or daylight balanced. I think generally it's safe to say that, if money is no object and unless one's trying to match ambient tungsten, daylight balanced lights are more useful. But, as I said, they are usually MUCH more expensive.

For strong focused lighting you can indeed use a Tungsten spotlight but you can just aswell use a (daylight balanced) HMI. Or you can use flash with a fresnel lens attachment but I generally prefer the HMI approach.
You can also get FL lighting in both tungsten and daylight balance.

But of course, any type of lighting has it's own merits and one should always choose what's right for the situation (I even like to mix tungsten and daylight sometimes in order to get a blue cast in the daylight). If I had to choose one particular piece of lighting equipment I would always go for the flash, though, for it's versatility.



The more I think about it the more I come to the conclusion that it's a no brainer for the OP to get flashes instead of hot lights. Tungsten lights (not just the light they emit but the device itself) get VERY hot after a while. Leave it on for a while and you can get serious 2nd degree burns touching them. I would really not want to have that anywear near children.
 
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