MarkBarbieri
Semi-retired
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2006
It's that time of year again. With a few recent exceptions, we've been setting up our garage as a photo studio every fall on the weekends around Halloween to take family pictures, Halloween pictures, and Christmas card pictures. I thought I'd summarize the process for anyone interested.
We use a white paper backdrop. For flooring, we use three sheets of Thrifty White Tile Board. It gives a light reflection of your subject, which helps give them a grounded look. Without it, they just sort of float in a sea of white. It's not necessary if you aren't shooting full body shots with feet in them.
For lights, we use some Alien Bee strobes, but any decent strobes will work. We're never near full power, so even a set of AB400s would be fine. Just make sure that you don't shoot while you have direct sunlight spilling into your subject area. You could use ordinary flash units instead of studio strobes, but it'll be much harder. You'll have to wait longer between shots for them to recharge and you'll have trouble getting enough power to use large softboxes. It's probably OK for shooting one or maybe two people, but harder with larger groups.
For our key light (the main light that lights your subject), we use a five foot octabox. Any softbox will do, but I like the nearly round look of an octa. The bigger the better (within reason). With a smaller box, you'll have to get it closer to your subject for the same "softness" of light and you'll have more issues with the person nearest the light source being lit more than the person farthest. All things equal, the larger your light source, the softer your light. Softer light means a more gradual fade from areas that are lit to areas that are in shadow.
For the fill light, you'll need something about half the power of your key light. I made a stupid mistake last weekend and shot it without a softbox. I did some tests on my wife and everything looked good. And if I shot with it close to the camera, it might have been OK. The problem is that I keep it to the front left (see the picture) and my hard (no softbox) fill cast shadows when I had multiple people or people holding objects. Better to have another softbox on it, although nothing as large as the 5' octa. I'll probably put a 2'x4' softbox on for next weekend. The purpose of the fill is to make sure that your shadows aren't too dark. Sometimes that can be an interesting look, but for the look I wanted, I wanted my shadows to only be about a stop darker. In a pinch, you can use a reflector or even a big white piece of poster board as a fill. Once again, that works OK for solo shots, but doesn't scale up as well as groups get larger.
Even though the backdrop is white, it won't look white if you don't light it. It'll look grey because it will be well behind the subjects that you are lighting, so less light will reach it from the key light and the fill light. The solution is to stick a couple of lights on it. Then again, maybe you want a gray background. In that case, just be careful not to have any wrinkles in it. With a well lit white background, you don't have to worry about wrinkles because your goal is to have it be completely white with no visible detail.
I used to use a light meter to set up my lights, but I rarely bother anymore for this sort of straightforward light setup. Put your camera in manual mode, set your aperture to f/8, your ISO to 200 (or higher if your lights don't have enough power), and your shutter speed to 1/125 (or something comfortably below your camera's sync speed). Adjust your key light until you like the exposure on that side of your subject. Now turn on your fill light and adjust it until your shadows still exist but are reasonably well lit. The ratio between key and fill is kind of an artistic judgement, but I like a roughly 1 to 1.25 stop difference. Finally, turn on exposure warning (the setting where overexposed areas flash) and adjust your background lights until most of the background is just over exposed. You want it overexposed so that it is solid white, but you don't want to overdo it too much because the light reflecting from the screen can cause other problems.
With that set up, shooting is pretty easy. We raise and lower the lights when our subjects are standing or sitting. I try to put the darkest person on the key light side because they'll get more light, but it isn't a huge issue. Reminder your subjects not to wear white (I forgot last weekend) because then it is hard to get separation between them and the background.
Glasses can be tricky if they don't have antiglare coatings. Do a test shot. If there is no glare, you're good. If there is, you have options. One is to reposition your lights more to the side, but that can make it hard to get the lighting right. The other is to take a mix of shots with and without the glasses and then composition the shots in Photoshop using the frames from the shots with glasses and the eyes from the shots without glasses. It's a pain, but it looks great. If these are your own kids, consider getting a set of frames with no glasses in them just for photos.
I forgot to turn the rear lights back on after doing some shots with a black background. I was able to convert it to a white background look by selecting the subject in lightroom, inverting my selection, and then boosting the exposure to the max. For the floor, I subtracted that from the overexposure mask with a linear gradient. Then I added another linear gradient on the floor to increase the exposure but not to the point of blowing out the floor. You could use this technique if you don't have strobes to cover your backdrop. It's extra work and not quite as good, but it gets the job done.
It takes us about 1-2 hours to set up the garage. We use SignUpGenius to set up 45 minute time slots for the weekends that we shoot and send out invites to friends, neighbors, and coworkers. How they spend their alotted time is up to them. Some just want kid shots. Some want to do multiple costume changes. Some bring props. We usually try to have a few fun props for people to use. It's just a hobby for us, so we don't charge anything, but you could probably charge enough to eventually cover the costs of your strobes if that is an issue. Our main expense is the flooring. We usually spend about $100 for five 4'x8' sheets - three to use and two for backups in case they get scratched up by dogs or punctured by women in high heels (not saying that there is anything wrong with men in high heels, but that hasn't been an issue for us).
It's a lot of work, but I think it is worth it. For a lot of our clients, this is the only decent family pictures they take all year. And yes, they could go to a studio and have professionals take the pics, but most of them never get around to it.
I'm still going through this years shots, but here are a few from a few years ago with the same setup.
We use a white paper backdrop. For flooring, we use three sheets of Thrifty White Tile Board. It gives a light reflection of your subject, which helps give them a grounded look. Without it, they just sort of float in a sea of white. It's not necessary if you aren't shooting full body shots with feet in them.
For lights, we use some Alien Bee strobes, but any decent strobes will work. We're never near full power, so even a set of AB400s would be fine. Just make sure that you don't shoot while you have direct sunlight spilling into your subject area. You could use ordinary flash units instead of studio strobes, but it'll be much harder. You'll have to wait longer between shots for them to recharge and you'll have trouble getting enough power to use large softboxes. It's probably OK for shooting one or maybe two people, but harder with larger groups.
For our key light (the main light that lights your subject), we use a five foot octabox. Any softbox will do, but I like the nearly round look of an octa. The bigger the better (within reason). With a smaller box, you'll have to get it closer to your subject for the same "softness" of light and you'll have more issues with the person nearest the light source being lit more than the person farthest. All things equal, the larger your light source, the softer your light. Softer light means a more gradual fade from areas that are lit to areas that are in shadow.
For the fill light, you'll need something about half the power of your key light. I made a stupid mistake last weekend and shot it without a softbox. I did some tests on my wife and everything looked good. And if I shot with it close to the camera, it might have been OK. The problem is that I keep it to the front left (see the picture) and my hard (no softbox) fill cast shadows when I had multiple people or people holding objects. Better to have another softbox on it, although nothing as large as the 5' octa. I'll probably put a 2'x4' softbox on for next weekend. The purpose of the fill is to make sure that your shadows aren't too dark. Sometimes that can be an interesting look, but for the look I wanted, I wanted my shadows to only be about a stop darker. In a pinch, you can use a reflector or even a big white piece of poster board as a fill. Once again, that works OK for solo shots, but doesn't scale up as well as groups get larger.
Even though the backdrop is white, it won't look white if you don't light it. It'll look grey because it will be well behind the subjects that you are lighting, so less light will reach it from the key light and the fill light. The solution is to stick a couple of lights on it. Then again, maybe you want a gray background. In that case, just be careful not to have any wrinkles in it. With a well lit white background, you don't have to worry about wrinkles because your goal is to have it be completely white with no visible detail.
I used to use a light meter to set up my lights, but I rarely bother anymore for this sort of straightforward light setup. Put your camera in manual mode, set your aperture to f/8, your ISO to 200 (or higher if your lights don't have enough power), and your shutter speed to 1/125 (or something comfortably below your camera's sync speed). Adjust your key light until you like the exposure on that side of your subject. Now turn on your fill light and adjust it until your shadows still exist but are reasonably well lit. The ratio between key and fill is kind of an artistic judgement, but I like a roughly 1 to 1.25 stop difference. Finally, turn on exposure warning (the setting where overexposed areas flash) and adjust your background lights until most of the background is just over exposed. You want it overexposed so that it is solid white, but you don't want to overdo it too much because the light reflecting from the screen can cause other problems.
With that set up, shooting is pretty easy. We raise and lower the lights when our subjects are standing or sitting. I try to put the darkest person on the key light side because they'll get more light, but it isn't a huge issue. Reminder your subjects not to wear white (I forgot last weekend) because then it is hard to get separation between them and the background.
Glasses can be tricky if they don't have antiglare coatings. Do a test shot. If there is no glare, you're good. If there is, you have options. One is to reposition your lights more to the side, but that can make it hard to get the lighting right. The other is to take a mix of shots with and without the glasses and then composition the shots in Photoshop using the frames from the shots with glasses and the eyes from the shots without glasses. It's a pain, but it looks great. If these are your own kids, consider getting a set of frames with no glasses in them just for photos.
I forgot to turn the rear lights back on after doing some shots with a black background. I was able to convert it to a white background look by selecting the subject in lightroom, inverting my selection, and then boosting the exposure to the max. For the floor, I subtracted that from the overexposure mask with a linear gradient. Then I added another linear gradient on the floor to increase the exposure but not to the point of blowing out the floor. You could use this technique if you don't have strobes to cover your backdrop. It's extra work and not quite as good, but it gets the job done.
It takes us about 1-2 hours to set up the garage. We use SignUpGenius to set up 45 minute time slots for the weekends that we shoot and send out invites to friends, neighbors, and coworkers. How they spend their alotted time is up to them. Some just want kid shots. Some want to do multiple costume changes. Some bring props. We usually try to have a few fun props for people to use. It's just a hobby for us, so we don't charge anything, but you could probably charge enough to eventually cover the costs of your strobes if that is an issue. Our main expense is the flooring. We usually spend about $100 for five 4'x8' sheets - three to use and two for backups in case they get scratched up by dogs or punctured by women in high heels (not saying that there is anything wrong with men in high heels, but that hasn't been an issue for us).
It's a lot of work, but I think it is worth it. For a lot of our clients, this is the only decent family pictures they take all year. And yes, they could go to a studio and have professionals take the pics, but most of them never get around to it.
I'm still going through this years shots, but here are a few from a few years ago with the same setup.
