Ask Dr. LiveJournal: photo lighting

[beowabbit]

Hi. If I want to take indoor pictures with my digital camera (photo-shoot style rather than candid-snapshot style, but not professional-grade), and I don't want to be dependent on the flash or on sunlight through windows, what do I need in the way of lighting, and how much should I expect to pay for it?

Comments

[ragingamazon.livejournal.com]

Using lights from a hardware store or household lights will give you an odd colored tint and less control than professional lights. You can probably get away with it if you do custom white balance since you are shooting digital.

I would suggest strobes lights (umbrella lights or soft boxes) as you can easily control your exposure and light ratio and you will not have to worry about tinting (as much). Oh, and you should get them with nifty radio slaves so you don't get tangled in wires; you don't know how nice slaved lights are until you have someone on set trip over a wire.

Places like zeff photo supply (www.zeffphoto.com) will rent equipment by the day and studio space by the hour and are usually good about working with your needs and space/budget constraints.

[beowabbit]

I would suggest strobes lights (umbrella lights or soft boxes) as you can easily control your exposure and light ratio and you will not have to worry about tinting (as much). Oh, and you should get them with nifty radio slaves so you don't get tangled in wires; you don't know how nice slaved lights are until you have someone on set trip over a wire.

Now I know how people feel when I talk about recompiling my kernel to add ext3 support. :-) I have a vague notion of what an umbrella light must be. I don’t know what a soft box is, or what it means to slave lights. I would love definitions.

(By the way, I'm not looking for something that would talk to my camera like a flash; I'm looking for something I would turn on and leave on while I was shooting.)

Thanks for the URL; I'll check them out!

[ragingamazon.livejournal.com]

(By the way, I'm not looking for something that would talk to my camera like a flash; I'm looking for something I would turn on and leave on while I was shooting.)


Oh, then you should look into hotlights...those you just leave on. Check out some rental places and the will be able to show you some options.