• 02-04-2004, 07:42 AM
    Petereos
    Help with setting up a small home studio
    I have been considering turning our brick built out house into a small photographic studio. The size of the room is about 8’ wide and 22’ long with a pitched roof of 10’.
    The idea is to make into a complete white room (floor, ceiling, roof all in matt white) with the intention of not having a back drop or any back lighting but to light up a large portion of the area in front and behind of the subject with one or two soft boxes. I enjoy taking pictures of babies and children and want to achieve that professional white infinity background look but, of course i am limited with such a small space.


    So here are a few questions

    With this set up, would it be possible to achieve and evenly lit person ( with white space above head and below feet) ? If this is possible, to achieve the impression of a larger room is there any reason why I can’t simply clone the white space above, side and below the subject in Photoshop to give impression of a larger studio/room?

    With one or two flash heads (in softboxs) placed in front of subject (approx 5’) would this be enough to fill the white area behind the subject? Would tungsten sunken spot lights in the ceiling help?

    Answers, questions or general tips are highly appreciated in advance

    Thank you
  • 02-04-2004, 08:28 AM
    dsl712
    Light the background independently
    The room is long enough although a bit narrow. If you want to get that white look, you will have to light the background seperately. The light hitting the background will need to be about 1 1/2 - 2 stops higher than that hitting the subject.

    Also to make sure the subject shadow doesn't hit the background, he/she will need to be a few feet from the wall; this is where the length of the room comes in handy.

    Because the room is narrow, it may be tough to get a large softbox (4ft) into the space with reflectors and such. Depending on the light you are looking for you may be shooting from in front of the light source (not a big deal people do it all the time).

    One small thing is that the seam where the wall meets the floor will show up. Typically people use white seamless paper curved from wall to floor or shoot in a cyclorama.

    Dennis