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Home Studio Setup for Good Portraits
Is your dream studio
a large, airy building with natural light streaming
through the windows, backdrops of every imaginable color
and huge amounts of lighting equipment? This would be
great if you have unlimited funds, but this is not a
practical way to start a small portrait studio.
You can consistently produce excellent
portraits of friends, family or clients with a small
living space that you convert into a studio.
Here are some of the things that you
need to consider.
BACKGROUNDS:
Backgrounds can be something as simple
as a blank white wall or as expensive as hand-painted
muslin and canvas backdrops. Large canvas tarps like
those that painters use to protect floors, are ideal
for spraying or splattering paint in various colors.
This is a good way to provide a variety of backdrops
in different colors for a nominal sum of money. Mis-matched
paint (almost all paint stores goof every now and then)
can be purchased for a fraction of the cost of a custom
color.
BACKGROUND SUPPORT:
Background supports can be permanent
or temporary. Two closet shelf brackets nailed high
on the wall about five to six feet apart can hold a
dowel with a sheet of seamless paper that can be rolled
down when you need the backdrop.
Vertical stands with a horizontal support
between them can provide a greater range of mobility
and can be stored in a closet when not in use. Extra
light stands can serve very well for this type of arrangement.
Also, background stands can be built from 1-1/2"
PVC pipe. With a few lengths of PVC, a few "elbows"
and "T's", you can have a custom background
stand of any size. If the pieces of PVC are just fitted
together and not glued, the entire stand can be disassembled
and stored in a closet.
LIGHTING:
Lighting is the most challenging part
of a home studio. The object of lighting is to control
light. One way to do this is to control unwanted light.
Any windows near your 'studio' site will tend to give
you unwanted highlights or compete with your main light
source. You will need to block the windows with some
type of black material so that there is no light entering
the room from the windows.
Photofloods and quartz lights are the
least expensive forms of lighting but they have one
major disadvantage...they are hot.
Instead of pointing these hot lights
directly at your subject (which is quite uncomfortable),
there are a couple of things that you can do. Try bouncing
the light off of the ceiling. You will lose two to three
f-stops when you bounce light. Another thing that can
be tried is to use a diffusion panel. This will lessen
the harshness of the light by spreading it out over
a larger area and will decrease the temperature of the
light on the subject.
SETTING UP THE STUDIO:
When your home studio is set up, you
will need to have a space of about six or seven feet
between your subject and the background in order to
avoid unwanted shadows. If this distance is not possible,
try placing the lights higher than your subject. This
will cause any shadows to be cast downward where they
will be hidden by the subject.
LIMITATIONS:
You can take a variety of portraits
that are of acceptable quality in a home studio. However,
you usually cannot take three-quarter of full-length
portraits because ceilings are too low. Also, do not
attempt to use a wide-angle lens as this produces a
very unattractive portrait and tends to distort facial
features. Stick to head-and-shoulders portraits and
you will have great images!
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