Home Studio

I was watching some videos on studio lighting, and I noticed that the softboxes had an interesting feature: They were loaded with compact fluorescents. This was an interesting discovery, since I expected tungstens and perhaps some other fancy exotic bulb inside. CFLs I can obtain for myself. That's when I figured that it would be a good idea to get out there and try to create my own budget studio rig.

Undoubtedly, standard studio equipment costs a bomb and the high powered stuff does indeed use exotic incandescents and strobes. But then light is light, and properly managed it can produce pretty much similar results as formal studio equipment. There's a difference, of course, since I'm just learning about lighting, and can take my time about things, while studios need everything snap snap.

Anyway, I got myself a bunch of really cheap wired bulb holders that came with oversized clips. A true godsend, since they were ready to clip to my tripods just like that. So my tripods made pretty convenient light stands to hold my new CFL lamps. The current problem is that I've only got bare bulbs, and really could do with some reflectors.

The next thing I did was to get a reflector and gobo, which ultimately took the form of a shower curtain and silver foil. I suppose it may even be possible to get silver foil trays for use as reflectors of my own bare bulbs. And then I got a black mounting board to put the items on for shooting.

Overall I think the setup's fine for now, but really, I need to brush up on my skillz. That's the ticket. Thankfully, the whole setup cost me less than $50 in marginal cost, which is way less than I'd have to pay for a single decent flash unit.