I want to try portrait shoot and need your help

Home · Register · Search · Software · Hosting · Software · Join Upload & Sell

FM Forums \| Lighting & Studio Techniques \| Join Upload & Sell
end

Olivier Nguyen
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #1 · I want to try portrait shoot and need your help

Hi everyone,
I have been photograph for at least 10+ years and mostly hand held outdoor family, event and macro. I m now a father of two sons. I would like to photograph them, my wife and family picture. My equipments is as following: nikon d300, 70-200, 180, 35-70, 17-35. Nikon flash sb900, sb80dx, sb80, vivitar 285hv. Gitzo tripods.
Canon 5D MKII, 70-200, 100, canon flash.

I dont know anything about light set up for portrait. What are the minimum required in term of equipment to get my into the door? I would like to keep it simple and cheap for now.

Can i use my flash lights as my lightning? If i buy umbrellas and softboxes to use with currently own flashes, would these umbrellas and softboxes can be use when i expand my light to something that more for studio?

My setup would be utilize during weekend only so setup on friday, shooting sat and sun, break down at sunday night

Thank you
Olivier

Aug 13, 2012 at 05:02 AM

saelee
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #2 · I want to try portrait shoot and need your help

There are a lot of different ways to go about it, depending on how much you want to spend and invest.

You can use your hot shoe flash that you already own or you can invest in buying studio lights. There are advantage and disadvantage to both system. Since you already own some lights, I would start out with your hot shoe flash and upgrade to studio lights if you need them down the line.

I know you own 4 lights. A lot of rookies make the mistake and try to use all 4 of them at the same time without mastering how to use one light first. You will only confuse yourself if you try to use all of them at the same time.

There are a lot of info online on how to setup lights. I would highly suggest you bookmark this site and go through Lighting 101.
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/02/welcome-to-strobist.html

Aug 13, 2012 at 07:34 AM

BrianO
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #3 · I want to try portrait shoot and need your help

Olivier Nguyen wrote: ...I dont know anything about light set up for portrait. What are the minimum required in term of equipment to get my into the door? I would like to keep it simple and cheap for now. ...Can i use my flash lights as my lightning?

You have more than enough equipment to get started; what you need is training in how best to use it.

Although "classical" portraiture often uses multiple lights with various modifiers, for what you want to do -- family portraits of wife and kids -- you can get very good results with just one light.

The secret is to get that one light off the camera and aim it in different directions for different effects...ceiling bounce, side-wall bounce, rear-wall bounce, etc.

Once you've mastered one light, you can then add another, and then another. Two lights are more than twice as difficult as one light, though, because you have the added cost/learning of remote triggering.

To get started I highly recommend this DVD set to watch:

http://zackarias.com/workshop/onelight-dvd/

Aug 13, 2012 at 08:29 AM

Olivier Nguyen
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #4 · I want to try portrait shoot and need your help

Thank you all for your replies.
Saelee and Briano, thanks for those two links and you both completely answer my question. Ireally tight in budget and want to start slow with equipments i currently has.
Thank again.
Olivier

Aug 14, 2012 at 02:12 AM

end
FM Forums \| Lighting & Studio Techniques \| Join Upload & Sell end