christo™
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 p.1 #16 · Decent Studio Setup (pricing) | |
Like Chuck says, it's all about what your needs are, and those will grow over time. $16K-$20K is quite realistic over time if you end up doing portraiture continuously, and I bet if the posters who mentioned that kind of money really added everything up, they would probably have a much higher number. For one thing, doing on-site work dang near requires a van or pickup truck with a topper for hauling the stuff around, and I bet the posters didn't factor that in! Also, when decent hard case wheel bags that allow you to conveniently move around the expensive lighting equipment and keep it protected go for $500 a pop, the bills add up in a hurry. As John mentioned, 8 foot ceilings don't cut it, so if you're talking your own studio, don't forget to factor in the outbuilding!
I bet the gal who owns my favorite local pro studio has $10K just in muslins and props.
In the mean time, starting out with lights like the Alien Bees, getting a little creative with hardware from Menards, and not going crazy with the modifiers makes the budgeting a lot simpler. What makes the budget a heck of a lot better is to rent stuff. Having a local pro shop with a decent stock is a life (and wallet) saver.
I unhesitatingly recommend the Alien Bee lights. They have starter kits with a decent discount, and I don't know of any way to get better light cheaper except if you can find the stuff used, but that stuff sells very quickly on eBay for a high percentage of new retail. You can certainly spend a lot more money on lights, and have to in order to get anything much better.
My #1 recomendation is to start out slow with a basic setup. It's about impossible to know what you realy want / "need" until after you've had the chance to work at it, made some mistakes, asked some questions, and had a chance to mess around with various models of equipment. No one can really tell you what is right for you. Buying stuff you end up not liking and not using is a great way to run the bill up higher faster. In the mean time, renting equipment from (and discussing it with) folks at a pro shop, hanging out with photographers experienced in your area, etc., is a great way to learn faster. I've found photographers to be a congenial lot in general, and they always can use help schlepping stuff and setting it up and dealing with the mundane details aside from shooting. Photographers love volunteers who are willing to forego the shutter button while helping out.
IMO a good starting setup is a basic two light setup (AB 800's) with stands, a couple of umbrellas, preferably the kind with removable liners that can be used for reflection or shoot-thru, a mid-large size softbox, and some arrangement for synching the camera and strobes.
If you're shooting at home and are blessed with an area with a 10+ foot ceiling, you can make your own backdrop hanger with black pipe hangers and heavy PVC tube rollers. If you want stands for the backdrops, you can rent them along with the backdrops pretty reasonably for the occaisional shoot. If you're going to do on-site work, you can again rent the stands and you can use large plastic tubs and a two-wheeler that converts into a 4-wheeler cart to make up for the lack of $1K in nice wheeled hard cases.
I believe pretty early on you will want to buy a few backdrops of your own, at least white, black, and a mottled gray. But you can rent that stuff for the first while. Pretty quickly, you're going to want a third light for backlighting. Not long after you will want a 4th light for various uses like hairlighting and as a spare. So, if your budget can handle it, getting another light head or two up front isn't ridiculous, particularly since you get a decent discount buying all at once -- but, again, not needed.
To me one of the really shocking thing about getting into studio stuff was how darned expensive decent stands are. I did the stupid thing and bought a kit with several stands that I consider too flimsy to be useful. Since then I started renting better stands and have been picking off used higher quality ones as they become available. There is no such thing as a stand that is too heavy duty or too light weight, and only the really quality ones offer a decent compromise of those properties. I still rent stands regularly.
The ugly truth is that, it's really easy to end up with $4K in just stands, booms, and clamps, and I bet some of the people on this forum who make a living doing on-site work have a heck of a lot more than that invested in those seemingly mundane accoutrements. Again, however, it is much a matter of a trade-off between time/convenience and money. Creativity at the "Photo Studio Equipment department at Menards", willingness to dink around in setup, patiently and avidly hunting for decent used gear, and a ton of gaffer's tape does do a lot to help bridge the expenditure vs capital gap.
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