Studio in the making?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

My new son-in-law is accepting a position which will move he and my daughter to Japan for a couple of years minimum. He gave me his light stands/lights/back drops/props and back drop stands the other day, since he isn't taking them with them.
My wife is all excited as now I should, with a little, or a lot, of practice, be able to take better pictures of her quilts.
Hope you all are able to help me make use of this equipment. I think I may need a new camera body to go with it. My birthday is coming up next month after all.



Crummy shot I know, it's all stored under the quilt frame for now. My wife suggested I put it there, I think just to make sure I didn't turn him down on his offer to give it to me.

[Shadowman]

Have fun and hope you get the new equipment.

[inkista]

Happy new gear! If you're not sure where to start, consider Zack Arias's white seamless video tutorials.

[Manfred M]

The equipment you have seems fine, but the key missing component seems to be the lights themselves.

Background stands might be something to hold up the quilts that your wife assumes you will be shooting, but light stands without any lights and light modifiers are not particularly useful. Did he leave his lights behind and if so, what else do you have to work with?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Not to worry Manfred, there are two 800w lights (dang those are BRIGHT), clamps, color filters, umbrella and other assorted things not shown in the photo. He wasn't able to empty all of the stuff out of his storage locker in one trip, so more will be coming.

[wilgk]

Excellent fun to be had for you now, that's for sure!

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Supposed to end up with two of these lights....



Should be more than plenty to light up a quilt or two.

[Manfred M]

Supposed to end up with two of these lights....



Should be more than plenty to light up a quilt or two.

Those are "hot lights" and are more for video / cinematography work than for photography. Get some really heavy leather gloves with long cuffs if you shoot with those as you can get a really nasty burn handling them. While 800 watts may sound like a lot, it isn't really and you are probably looking at some longish (i.e. not hand-held) work. As well, output is constant, so you have to control your shots through adjustments in ISO, aperture and shutter speed.

The real problem with hot lights is that they really can't take any light modifiers (they would melt and burn) so you have a small, harsh light source. Barn doors tends to be as sophisticated as these little beasts get. They would be relatively useless in shooting the quilts as you would get a real hot spot on the subject from them. You could probably use them for tabletop work, so long as the tabletop and subject can take the heat, but the moment you back off on distance, you are going to get some really harsh shadows.

The reason I say they aren't really that bright is that my studio flash is rated at 640 W-s and flash duration is about 1/1000th sec. To get the same amount of light out of a continuous light 640/)1/1000) = 640,000W. I made some unrealistic assumptions here dealing with synch speed, but if I had a camera with a leaf shutter that fired at 1/1000th sec, we would be in the right order of magnitude.

[rpcrowe]

Manfred mentioned
"Get some really heavy leather gloves with long cuffs if you shoot with those as you can get a really nasty burn handling them."

One of the best types of gloves for this type of work are welding gloves...
http://www.amazon.com/Welding-EXTREM...g+gloves&psc=1
They are fairly inexpensive.

BTW: I use these gloves when I get a new mother who is protective of her litter of puppies. I have been bitten by several moms until they get to know me and trust me. It is a lot more comfortable to have the gloves on when I am bitten, Usually, it only takes a day or two until they learn to trust me.

[IzzieK]

These are some equipments. Is your SIL a videographer?

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Izzie - no, he used to take portraits so accumulated all this gear in that endeavor.
My wife got me to inventory it out in the garage.
Here's a picture of the 'big' pieces.

[Manfred M]

That type of equipment was used to do portraits back in the 1940s and 1950s. Hot lights are no fun to work with for either the photographer or the subject, so I wonder why he went in that direction? I say that with some experience as when I took a portraiture workshop a few years ago, the prof took us into a studio and we pulled out the old Mole-Richardson hot lights to recreate some of the old B&W "Hollywood" looks.

The studio heated up quite quickly and it became uncomfortably hot to work in (this was Canada in the winter too!). The continuous lights meant that it was hard to get a good shot as the subject would tend to squint. Because of the relatively low light levels, shots were taken with the aperture settings wide open and at slow shutter speeds.

I much prefer studio flash.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I was surprised at how warm the light was, just turning it on for just a short time. My garage door has white insulation on the inside so I am planning on shining the light at it and using the bounced light to illuminate the subject, be it person or quilt. What do I have to loose? Worth a try. I was also going to try aiming the lights into the reflector umbrella too, rather than directly at the subject.
If all else fails I've got a bunch of old fans I can set up too!

[Manfred M]

I was surprised at how warm the light was, just turning it on for just a short time. My garage door has white insulation on the inside so I am planning on shining the light at it and using the bounced light to illuminate the subject, be it person or quilt. What do I have to loose? Worth a try. I was also going to try aiming the lights into the reflector umbrella too, rather than directly at the subject.
If all else fails I've got a bunch of old fans I can set up too!

1. These lights delivery hot spots if aimed directly at the subject. In portraiture, you can get away with that if you place the lights relatively close to the subject.

2. Umbrellas can work, but they are made from synthetic materials (nylon, polyester, etc), and these have a tendency to MELT and can BURN when they get too close to hot lights. Be very, very cautious if you try this. I personally wouldn't even attempt to use external light modifiers with these types of lights.

[Mike Buckley]

2. Umbrellas can work, but they are made from synthetic materials (nylon, polyester, etc), and these have a tendency to MELT and can BURN when they get too close to hot lights. Be very, very cautious if you try this. I personally wouldn't even attempt to use external light modifiers with these types of lights.

To put that into perspective, I accidentally melted a piece of diffusion material instantly upon coming in contact with a blue incandescent bulb, which is considered a hot light for good reason. The halogen bulbs in your system are far hotter.