Digital portraits and Lighting/ What to use

[calmdowneight]

I have a kodak z650 and am starting my own home studio for portraits both indoor and outdoor. Is this a decent enough camera for portraits or is there some better suited in the $300-$450 price range? On the subject of lighting I have decided to go with continious lighting, is a Smith Vector kit with 2 umbrellas and light stands, plus a boom style backlight with a total of 1250watts good enough for some indoor portraits against a muslin background.

[another view]

Hi and welcome - you'll probably get better answers and more information in the Studio and Lighting forum here on this site for that question, but I'll leave it here because of the other question. You may want to repost that question if you don't get a lot of answers.

I found the camera review at dpreview and looked at their conclusions and I think you're fine with it. Compact cameras can show a lot of noise with longer shutter speeds and higher ISO but as long as you have enough light to shoot at ISO100 that shouldn't be an issue. They say the camera has excellent color and good white balance but with hot (continuous) lights you'll want to use the tungsten white balance setting which should be at least very close.

I haven't used hot lights but my concern would be whether you have enough light to shoot at ISO100, fast enough shutter speed (1/60 on a tripod, I'd say) and small enough aperture to get enough depth of field for your shot, although f5.6 should be all you need (and maybe too much, having a muslin BG out of focus usually looks best and hides wrinkles in it). A lot of people prefer strobes (mono lights or studio strobes) because they're not so hot (temperature-wise) on the subject and can put out a ton of power, but they are quite a bit more expensive.

[freygr]

I have to say if you setting up the studio to make money you better have better camera film or digital which can be classed a a pro or semi-pro camera.

[gryphonslair99]

To expound on what freygr is saying, looking at the camera you have, how do you plan on triggering the lights. Your Kodak does not have a hot shoe so no wireless or cable set up there. Nor is it equipped with a pc sync socket to use a cable to trigger the lights.

Sounds to me like you should get a couple of books on studio lighting and portrait work and learn more about the mechanics first. Then you will understand where you need to go camera wise.

Edited 11/21/07

Sorry, Missed the continious lighting part. I still would recommend that you learn more about studio lighting. Continious lighting has it's own set of challenges, including cooking your subjects with continious lights that will heat them up. Not a fun thing for someone sitting under them.