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Studio lighting
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This is a common question, but I’ll ask anyway.
I have been offered some regular work doing about 100 product shots to go onto a retailer’s website (I’ve been aching to get some paid photo work).
I have no studio lights.
After a bit of research, it looks like an Interfit 150w kit should do the trick – two lights, stands, cables, choice of brollies/boxes.
With little or no lighting experience but a wealth of technical know-how and photographic enthusiasm – should I be OK with something like this?
Or should I be thinking of tungsten lamps, or maybe unbranded ebay kits?
Is this the kind of kit I can expand if necessary?Any input at all would be appreciated.
You don’t give any clue as to what sort of product you expect to have to photograph, so it’s difficult to make any specific suggestions. What you need to photograph a car is totally different to what you need to photograph jewellery for example. I suspect that you’re at the smaller scale of things however and for small scale work, you ought to be able to get away with using daylight. A lot of contemporary food photography is done using daylight.
If you feel that flash is necessary, there are lots of resources on the WWW. One site which I visit occasionally had a nice little piece on jewellery photography – http://www.lighting-essentials.com/shooting-earrings-without-a-net-guest-post-by-josh-targownik/. I think there may be a few more free tutorials of relevance over at the Product/Still Life section of Photoflex
If you’re going to invest in studio flash, don’t waste money on something like the Interfit kit you mentioned. In the long run you would find yourself frustrated by the limitations imposed by such a basic kit. Better off going with a startup kit from Bowens or Elinchrom. Even the Elinchrom D-Lite kit would serve you better than the aforementioned Interfit kit, IMHO.
The other option would be to rent equipment for the shoot and pass on the rental charge to your client.
Hi Cormac,
We can supply either the Interfit 150 kits, or their Compact Flourescent kit which is easy to use – both are very cheap- but limited. Something like the Elinchrom BX / RX ranges would be overkill by the sound of it, so the perfect fit in my opinion would be the Elinchrom D-lite’s.
There are two kit options: D-Lite 2 for €595 of D-Lite 4 for €699. Both kits have two heads, stands leads, Modelling lamps, cases and a DVD. The get great reviews everywhere and the latest units now include fan cooling as standard. We also have some Non- Fan cooled heads and some Ex-demo heads at 10% and 17% discount res. All Elinchrom heads use the same accessories so you can build your kit if required without anything being obsolete.
AVOID the cheap “brands” like the plague!Ps. We will have an offer on D-Lites at PhotoFest and a few days afterwards, but we will only announce the deals at the show!
I really appreciate the input here guys, thanks so much.
Would it be possible to start off using one good elinchrom strobe with a softbox and also use my Nikon SB600 flash with a brolly on another stand?
I often fire the SB600 remotely from the D200, can I also do that with the new light?
The kind of products I am shooting range from shoes and trousers to aprons and tool belts – some on a mannequin, others on stands.
Any thoughts on the strobe/flash combo?
Sorry for the random thought pattern.
Hi Cormac, There is no problem mixing the two. The Elinchrom’s slave will pick up the 600’s light and work in sync. You can get excellent results using just one light and a large reflector (obviously two gives you more options).
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