Q: Studio lights for portraits

[Madison]

Hi,





Quick one: I want to do portraits in a small (very small) studio setup. Usually one person, sometimes a group of up to four, but close together because of the confined space.

I am also on a limited budget. I am thinking of getting the new 2x400w Gemini set from Bowens. The question is: will this be enough? I suspect yes for one person (even full body) but I also suspect it *could* be tight for four people setups.

How will I do when I get these? Most of it will be one person anyway but I do want to know your opinions on this as far as lighting more than one person with this set.

Thanks so much in advance for your help and input and have a great day!


M

[Sean Setters]

Well, it depends on what you want to do exactly with your lighting. With two lights, you'll have a main light and a fill light. However, will you ever want to light the background? Two 400w lights should be enough to simply cover a small group of people especially in a confined space.


Have you looked into alienbees? I've never heard a bad word against them, they're reasonable, and rugged.

[Dallasphotog]

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Two Smith-Victor 500W photo floods bounced off umbrellas with a 480EX fill flash. This is a VERY inexpensive set-up.

[wusstigphoto]

I purchased an ebay package and am very impressed with it... paid $597 total for two 600W strobes, 2 soft-boxes, stands, and a case. It also came with several trigger cables and an RF trigger. I was leery about the quality but was very impressed after using it on several shoots. here's a pic of the strobe set...


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For this pic, I used both strobes with softboxes, one for primary and one for fill, I used a snooted 430ex for the background 'halo' and asnooted Nikon SB-24 for the hair rim-lighttriggered by cactus RF triggers. Shot with a 30D, 17-55 2.8 @55mm/f4.5. 10' spacing between my subject and background and 10' between subject and camera.


Oh yeah, almost forgot... teenage acne post-processed out using Lightroom 2 []


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As far as power is concerned, these 600W strobes have two digital scales, 1.0-5.0 and in .1 increments. each strobe was ~8' away. Primary was set to1.8 power and the other was set to 1.3. In some test shots,shooting at f2.8,strobe settings of 1.0 and 1.0 (minimum setting) was waaay too much power.So I would think 200-400W strobes in a small studio would be more than enough imho.


Dave

[Oren]

Really amazing what you can do with good lightning!

[Colin]

Hey Madison, please show us some results after you get your setup going and get a good feel for it.


I like pictures of oranges!