Home portrait advice

Hey guys, I need some advice please on lighting for portraits at home. What light(s) and light source(s) are the best to achieve some decent portraits at home without buying expensive lighting kits? Also, flash/no flash and white balance? Im not looking into doing anything to serious, just mess around and get the hang of portraits. I do most of my shooting outside and not of people. Thank you!

I've used my sb800 and sb28 speedlights to shoot portraits before and have been pleased with the results. I have used them as one and two light setups. Many times I bounce one of the speedlights into a black backed white umbrella or use the umbrella without the back as a white shoot-thru. You could also use a desk lamp as I have seen some people do or even light through a window and some white foam board or something else similar (white sheet, silver sunshade for car window, etc.) as a reflector for some added fill. As for white balance I normally shoot auto wb or set it to the flash setting if I am using my speedlights.

I had 5 minutes to set and shoot a corporate head shot for publication last week. The killer was it had to look like all the other ones that we did earlier in the year. On that one, we had to to rig a proper background, my studio flashes with a large octobox on the main, reflector fill and a softbox hair light. With only 5 minutes for this set and shoot, we used an SB800 on a stand through a 32" white shoot through, camera right, a white 42" reflector subject left, and my 6'2" son holding the old Sunpack PZ5000 with a lumiquest snoot as the hair light. I have an old tripod bag that carries two 32 " umbrellas, light stands and an impact boom stand for the 42" 5 way reflector. One umbrella is a shoot through , and the other a white bounce. In an old small back pack are two old Sunpack strobes, a photoflex 12 x 9 mini softbox and a few clamps. it makes for a very quick location kit. Too bad we didn't have time to get his tie on straight.
D200, ISO 100, 1/125 at F/8. Tokina 100 mmm 2.8 ATX Pro. I love this lens, tack sharp, 1:1 macro and a great price. Doesn't have a built in HSM, but who cares, portrait subjects aren't usually moving that quickly.

with tungsten = two reflector stands fitted with 200W milky bulbs and a spot with 200W philips bulb = WB on tungsten, later more corrected by the printer. spot for hair or b/ground and one reflector at left 45 degree slight above head, second near camera as fill-in, spot on hairs and whie foam/towel reflector, if needed. these afe sufficient to experiment for good studio work. later can be replaced by flash(unbrella,soft box etc) lights. good luck.

I'm far from an expert on this topic, but it's something I've been studying for a while now, and I found tons of useful information on the Strobist website. I highly recommend you go there and read as much of it as you can find time for. The link below is to a specific article describing a budget student lighting kit, which is almost exactly what I bought. It explains how to use a hot shoe flash with an umbrella. The specific flash unit is not very important, so you can pick one that will also work well on your camera (I use an SB-600). You don't need TTL for this kind of set up, assuming you're shooting digital, because you can just take a few test shots in manual mode before starting the real shoot.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/05...ff-camera.html

Good luck,
Paul

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Originally Posted by slayer7124

Hey guys, I need some advice please on lighting for portraits at home. What light(s) and light source(s) are the best to achieve some decent portraits at home without buying expensive lighting kits? Also, flash/no flash and white balance? Im not looking into doing anything to serious, just mess around and get the hang of portraits. I do most of my shooting outside and not of people. Thank you!

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Well, I spent about $5,000 on windows last year, but they work great.

If you are just starting to mess around and get the hang of it, I'd save my money. Utilize what you have and then decide if you need something more. Plus with windowlight, you can see what it's going to look like on your subjects face before you download everything.