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Re: Basic advice needed: minimum set-up for indoor product shots
In reply to MUFFLER,
3 months ago
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MUFFLER wrote:
We've built a little area where we'll have silk white plasterboard to three sides, and white paint on a concrete floor which I hope will be sufficient, but I need to light in sufficiently to take half decent shots.
What's the minimum I need to sufficiently light the scene? I'll be shooting with a 35mm prime lens, from around 2.5m, and the lighting needs to be either celing mounted or around 1m from the bike.
Would two 80cm soft boxes with 450w 5400k equivilent bulbs be sufficient to light the bike well, or am I massively underestimating it?
It's not the amount of light that's important but the way you use it (size isn't everything...) Assuming that you use a tripd and don't have live models in shot you could use a tenth of that wattage and get away with it.
It sounds like your 'little area' is a bit too little. How big is it?
Will you be shooting complete bikes or just details? Using a 35mm only 2.5m away will give a fairly steep perspective that you may not want all the time. Having the lights only 1m from the bike is going to limit you as well.
Given the white walls and possible a matching ceiling you can do a lot with bounced rather than direct light, but with shiny surfaces (and what bike doesn't have those?) you'll need to place your lights very carefully so as not to get big unwanted blobs of specular reflection where you don't want them.
Do you expect to get a smooth, seamless white background? Your white plasterboard structure will have corners that you'll have to hide in post processing. The shorter the lens that you shoot with the wider the background will need to be to avoid this problem.
Before you spend any money on lighting set up a typical shot and look at how it looks. Then you can try 'lighting' it with any lights (desk anglepoise for example) you have handy shining through a home-made diffuser. This will give you some idea of whether your initial idea will work.
--
Albert
Every photograph is an abstraction from reality.
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