My first studio lighting experience

[ms.yt]

I bought a used Bogen 200B from a photographer friend, and I put it to use for the first time the other night with a friend of mine. I think they may be a little underexposed, but I was generally pleased for my first time using studio lighting.

This one is actually a bit overexposed.

 

[Suburbanmom]

Nice job! You did well on posing her too.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

VERY nice! Eventually I'd like to get some kind of lighting setup for just kids in the family for the holidays. If they come out 1/2 as nice as the ones you posted, I'll be very pleased. Do you have any pictures of the setup?

 

[pointandshoot]

Nice. I like the third one. Great to have a friend to pose for you.

Chuck

 

[MICKEY88]

they look great..

did you shoot raw or jpeg, if you shot raw it should be fairly simple to bump the exposure a little bit, to get them where you want them..

one thing you might want to try is getting a little light on the background to provide seperation with your subject, a simple and inexpensive way to do this is to buy some foam core and use it as a reflector to bounce some of your light, either onto the background or onto your subject from behind..

 

[ms.yt]

they look great..

did you shoot raw or jpeg, if you shot raw it should be fairly simple to bump the exposure a little bit, to get them where you want them..

one thing you might want to try is getting a little light on the background to provide seperation with your subject, a simple and inexpensive way to do this is to buy some foam core and use it as a reflector to bounce some of your light, either onto the background or onto your subject from behind..

Thanks everybody!

Mickey, I shot in jpeg. A friend of mine tried to convince me to shoot in raw. I tried it once but went back to jpeg on my next shoot. I know it would give me greater control in modifying the images, but I'm just not comfortable working with raw images yet. The lack of separation bothers me too. I used a white foam core reflector, but I think I had it too far away from my subject to do much good. I shot some more last night with it closer, and it seemed to work much better.

I'm in a tiny little community with a lot of part time photographers within a 30 mile radius. A lot of these people are producing really substandard work and not charging much for it, so they are getting a lot of business. I want my stuff to look as good as it can with what I've got, but it doesn't make any sense for me to spend a fortune on lighting when people are used to spending money on really bad stuff. Everybody in the area is so happy with my stuff and my prices that I've got all the work I can handle right now (I'm just doing this in my spare time). I'm guessing a lot of part timers like me have the same issue.

 

[MICKEY88]

I used to be a diehard jpeg shoooter, until I shot a sweet 16 birthday party in
a room that was all black and only lit with colored spotlights, my test shots before the party worried me, so I switched to raw for the party, I was very glad I did,I did a batch conversion to jpeg using the sony software, some of the jpegs were bad.. so I opened the raw files and processed them individually and the results were amazing.. since the extra info to work with, saved some of the pictures...
now I shoot only raw, then I do a batch conversion to jpeg, it will yield the same results as shooting jpeg, so I have a quick set of jpegs, then I go thru and any I am not satisfied with, I will open the raw and work with it, then save it in place of the original jpeg.


as far as llighting goes there are some fairly inexpensive setups to be found on ebay