(Portable) lighting equipment for high key / white background shots

[janoszen]

Hi everyone,

thank you for the opportunity to ask my question here. I want to get into shooting portrait shots with completely white, even backgrounds and I'm looking into buying additional lighting equipment to do that.

What I own:

• A Canon EOS 650D
• A Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash
• A light stand and umbrella
• A Walimex background system and a white cloth backdrop

I've already tried myself with a single Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT to light the background, but it's not enough to produce an even white.

• What kind of lighting equipment would you buy for such a setup?
• What kind of light modifiers (softbox, umbrella) would you use?

My financial goal would be to get a decent setup around 2000 USD (or 2000 EUR since stuff is more expensive around here anyway).

I've done some digging and found that I could probably use two speedlights with umbrellas to light the background, but I have no idea if my 430EX II caliber speedlight would be enough or if I need to go higher and get the 600. Alternatively I'd also be happy with some 230V powered studio lights as long as they are small enough to take them with me. (I travel between two cities.)

Unfortunately my ability to rent equipment for testing is limited since it is less customary here in Austria than in the US.

I realize the question is a bit open ended, as a newbie to photography I'm more than happy to accept any suggestions you may have.

 

[Hugowolf]

Personally, and others may disagree, I think umbrellas are possibly the worse thing for hot white background shots, although they can be made to work for high key shots. What you need for hot white backgrounds is the ability to control the spread of light, and that is difficult to do with umbrellas on the background.

Zack Arias has a good tutorial: http://www.zarias.com/white-seamless-tutorial-part-1-gear-space/

… but it doesn’t have to be as complex as that.

You can do it with speed lights, but you will need three of them: Two for the background and one (with reflectors) for your subject. You can use umbrellas for the subject, but softboxes, preferably strip boxes, are better for the background. In fact barndoors or flagged lights work well.

Remember, the entire background does not have to be evenly lit. As long as the immediate area surrounding the subject is white, it takes only a second or two to dodge out the rest.

The important things to watch for are:
The subject(s) need to be far enough from the background to prevent reflected light wrapping and bleeding into them.
The background, when metered from behind the subjects, should be no more than a stop higher than the subjects metered from front (preferably 1/3 stop) – the background should be ‘just’ overexposed, the subjects should be correctly exposed.

Brian A

 

[Sailor Blue]

There are two ways to do this. One is with studio strobes, one is with hot-shoe flash units.

With studio strobes you get modeling lights so you can see that the lighting is correct before you press the shutter button, assuming that the ambient light level is low enough that you can see the modeling light.

The drawback to studio strobes is that you need either wall current for power or you must use special portable power supplies that contain high capacity batteries and an inverter to convert the batter power to wall current power.

With hot-shoe lights you don't have modeling lights so setting up the lighting is a mater of trial and error. What you do have is portability, but at the cost of lots of batteries.

For a studio strobe setup I recommend you stack two 150Ws studio strobes with their simple metal bell reflectors on a single stand as a background light. You need two sets of these, one stand on each side of the background. You will also need a pair of 300Ws lights for the main and fill lights with appropriate diffusers. All lights should have at least 5 stops of power adjustment.

For hot-shoe flash units you also need six lights, two mounted vertically on each side of the background and one each for the main and fill lights with appropriate diffusers.

If your diffusers are larger than a 24"x24" (60cmx60cm) softbox or a 43" (110cm) umbrella you should probably be using two hot-shoe flash units in them for more power, raising the count to 8 hot-shoe flash units.

For hot-shoe flash units there is no need to buy E-TTL. Since the light to background and light to subject distances will be fixed you are better off using manual power control instead of TTL so that the exposures are constant regardless of clothing color.

I can't recommend what to buy in Europe but for studio strobes get good quality ones that have portable power packs available. For hot-shoe flash units get simple manual power control only ones that have built in optical slaves. If you fire one of the background lights with a budget priced RF trigger all the other lights will fire.

In the US I would recommend Yongnuo RF-603 RF triggers. I would also recommend these hot-shoe flash units. Look at these as a guide to what to get.

Neewer TT520 Speedlite Flash - Sam Rosenthal Photography | Blog:

Neewer TT560 review: Studio and Lighting Technique Forum: Digital Photography Review

Speedlights.net | Yongnuo Speedlite YN 460-II Flash Review (Manual Flash)

Speedlights.net | Yongnuo Speedlite YN560-II Manual Flash (Manual Flash)

If you want full professional grade hot-shoe flash units then I would recommend the Canon 430EX II or the Nissin Di622-II.

Speedlights.net | Canon 430EX II Speedlite Flash Review

Speedlights.net | Nissin Flash Review: Di622-II (flash for Canon / Nikon)

 

[janoszen]

Thank you for your response, it has been very helpful. I'm struggling a bit what equipment to pick though. I have good but very brief experience with Walimex light stands, the price/quality ratio is quite good. The do not sell softboxes for speedlights though, at least not around here. Any recommendations on that?

 

[janoszen]

Thank you very much, that's quite some info. I don't mind having cable-powered studio lights, I don't plan on shooting outdoors, so 230V is available almost everywhere. What I'm a little worried about is the amount of lights since I will need to transport it around and I'm not a professional so I'm on my own for all that gear (or at least not yet, we'll see what the future holds).

 

[birdpix]

For a simpler high-key background that is portable and uses only 1 or 2 lights in it, consider a product made by Lastolite called the "HiLite" ( http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=580392&is=REG&A=details&Q= )

It is like two pop-up backgrounds held about a foot apart by spreader bars - inside there is a reflective surface that bounce light out the white front side. You stick a light (hotshoe flash or studio strobes) through zippers on the sides or top/bottom, and it becomes a big softbox that you put behind your subjects. The advantage over traditional high-key setups is it takes a LOT less space as the background becomes only about a foot deep. You can then put a subject pretty close to it when shooting

We bought the small one for around $200. (US) and it works great for headshots with a single monolight inside. We hang it on one lightstand to hold it up at the proper height behind our subject and put an alien bee with a diffuser sock over the standard reflector on a short b/g lightstand coming up from underneath to give us a large even white BG.

They make models that are large enough for full body shots. They are not cheap and I have not tried the larger sizes personally, although they look good in action (search youtube "Lastolite HiLite").

Folding up the thing takes a little practice. Not hard if you are used to folding up pop-up backgounds, but you definitely want to make sure you KNOW how to fold it before trying to do so in front of clients.

Oh yeah, the thing also makes a nice softbox when using it if front of subjects!

 

[Sailor Blue]

janoszen wrote:

Thank you very much, that's quite some info. I don't mind having cable-powered studio lights, I don't plan on shooting outdoors, so 230V is available almost everywhere. What I'm a little worried about is the amount of lights since I will need to transport it around and I'm not a professional so I'm on my own for all that gear (or at least not yet, we'll see what the future holds).

One option I didn't mention is to light the background with hot-shoe flash units and then use studio strobes for the main and fill lights. This increases the portability of the setup.

Four budget priced but reasonable quality hot-shoe flash units can run you only US $200 to $300. Be sure you always have fully charged batteries and extra batteries with you. I recommend a smart charger like the Maha PowerEx MH-C9000 WizardOne Charger-Analyzer.

 

[Klaus dk]

A smart and very portable crossover between umbrellas and softboxes is a brolly box, like the Photek Softlighter. It works with speedlights and studio strobes. Walimex makes a knockoff: Schirmsoftbox Reflektor which comes in three sizes.

Nissin Di 866 mk. II is a very capable speedlite with one of the highest GN's for at battery flash. One in a Schirmsoftbox Reflektor on each side of the background should get you a long way.

Good luck.

 

[Sailor Blue]

I don't recommend using umbrellas or brollyboxes for lighting a seamless white background.

One of the most frequently forgotten necessities is to make sure that light from the background lights doesn't hit the subject. Just like overexposing the background by more than one stop or placing the subject too close to the background this can cause the edges of the subject to be blown out.

If you look at Zack Arias's setup he uses folding closet doors as free standing flags between the background lights and the subject to make sure that this doesn't happen.

Zack Arias - White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space

Zack Arias - White Seamless Questons Video

If flags are needed for studio strobes with 7" bowl reflectors just think what would happen if you use umbrellas (aka light grenades) or brollyboxes. Softboxes with grids or well recessed diffusers are better but you will probably still need flags.

Lighting a seamless background is one place where the way hot-shoe flash units beam light comes in very handy since it minimizes the need to flag the lights. I find a simple sheet of black Coroplast flag attached to the hot-shoe flash is sufficient. Of course you could use something like Rogue Flashbenders but Coroplast is cheaper.

 

[janoszen]

Hi guys,

it's been some time since I've last been here. Since then the perspectives and roles have changed a bit. My current employer had me do a video project, so I decided to go with continuous lighting and discard the requirement for a portable kit.

As a result I bought a couple of Walimex Daylight 1000 boxes which turned out to be a decent compromise. (A key point being that they were actually available for delivery within an acceptable time frame here in Austria.)

The 7 boxes I finally got give off a decent amount of light, so I can go around 3.5 with 1/50th of a second. I set them up so 4 boxes light the background, 3 to light my subject. I especially like that they come with standard E27 sockets, so I could choose to take bulbs from a different vendor if I was so inclined.

What bothers me is the lack of control in the amount of light, since you can only choose between half and full power. Also, the softbox isn't really that "soft", there's more than a full stop difference in light between the center and the edge.

That being said, I haven't tried it out on a white background yet and I'm still learning to use the equipment. I'll get back to this topic once I've got some decent shots with them on white background.

Janos