My wife is a preschool teacher, the principle of this private school is kinda impressed with all the family photo I took and they are asking me to do their yearbook, next Thursday I would have to take photo of the school teachers and those are going to be shoulder to head portraiture. Well the problem is, I don't have any lightning setup and I want to get a decent home portrait/studio kit. If they are please with the result then there will be an opportunity for me to do all the kids photo in that school (money opportunity!!), for now I do not want to spend too much money on a super-duper lightning kit, but something to get me started, I need the kit to be somewhat portable and have a budget about $400...please help!



My gears:
40D
24-105L
100-400L
580EX with omnibounce.

I'd get:

Used/LN condition: AB400, light stand
New: Umbrella, reflector

AB400 should run you ~$180 used, light stand $20-$25, 40''-60'' umbrella $30, 4'x6' reflector $60. Alternately, you can get a piece of foam core instead of a reflector, which you'll end up throwing away after a few days/weeks depending on how you use it.

You could even fit in an AB 22'' beauty dish for $120 in there if you really want to leave them impressed. Unless you have to fit in a BG system with just $400.

yauyi wrote:
I need the kit to be somewhat portable and have a budget about $400...please help!


$400 is pretty tight, you really need a 3-4 light set up to do these right.
You might consider renting until you can afford more.

first this
http://www.alienbees.com/beginner.html

then this
http://tinyurl.com/28r46g

read this
http://tinyurl.com/yp8y6m

You could always use your 580 ex as a second light. just get a stand and a shoot through umbrella (strobist style)
You CAN pull it off with TWO lights.

These were all shot with two lights and in some cases a reflector.

thanks for the help, I have been doing lots of reading in the past few hours and came to the conclusion that the AlienBees is my best bet. I'll have to stretch my budget a bit and get their setup instead of wasting my money on some cheap chinese made knock-off. I'm thinking about getting The DigiBee kit for $600, it came with the B800 and B400, along with few more accessories. is this a good starter kit?

I think I would use my 580EX as fill flash, use the B800 as the main, and B400 for back light (or hair hi-light), and use a reflector for additional fill...

I use 2 ab400s I think you'd be fine with that set up.

I'd use the 580 as the back light. Much smaller and easier to position outside the frame, not to mention that the AB will be giving you better light with a decent modifier. The 580 will also give you the pseudo-ability to zoom your light so you have some control without buying a set of grids.

For any sort of a hair light, you'll need a boom and preferably a small softbox with grids. Boom's $100, SB will run you $50-ish. I wouldn't get into that for just this gig unless you have plenty of time to practice. Hair/rim lighting can easily ruin a shoot if it's overdone or uncontrolled.

that's a good idea for using my 580 as the back light, can also use Roscolux swatchbook gels for different effect.

Yeah, forgot to mention that. I snap them up on B&H every time they come back in stock. Takes about 3-4 months to get to you from their site for free IIRC.

in that case, I will take you guys advice and get the B800 and use it as the key light, and use the 580 as the back light, throw in a reflector for fill, should I get the silver/white reversible umbrella instead of the shoot-through? I think most samples I saw with the shoot-through umbrella are kinda flat looking and lack of definition.

Shoot-throughs can work well for fill, though I don't personally use them. Too much light loss. Around half the light is being bounced back instead of going through, so you may find that your contrast is dropping from light reaching the lens, unless you flag it off. For only about $30 you can get one that has a cover so you can decide which you like best, whether shoot-through or putting the cover for better efficiency. If you want to see a fun blog from a guy who shoots naked chicks for a living and loves his shoot-throughs, check out http://prettygirlshooter.blogspot.com/ . NSFW

i have a chance to look at some comparison shots with different kind of modifiers (http://www.bron.ch/vt_pd_lg_sc_en/index.php) and you are right, looks like I would lose quite a bit light with shoot-through, the B800 might handle it ok but I found something pretty cool, the photek Softliter, can bounce it, shoot through, and a softbox-like cover as well, I think i'll go for that softliter umbrella


thanks for the link, very interesting stuff indeed.

good info m-e-p marking this for reference.

Well, I pulled the trigger yesterday and ordered the following:

B400
CB1 bag
Honeycomb Grids kit (10, 20, 30, 40)
10ft stand
46" Photek Softliter II umbrella
Photek background-in-a-bag (stormy gray) with support kit


I went over my budget...total cost about $650 including 2nd day shipping. I'm not sure why but for whatever reason it kinda bother me to spend that much money on lightning equipment, but I didn't hesitate to drop $1200 on the 40D body, and $1100 on a 100-400 lens that I don't get to use much. I'll find out soon if the B400 is powerful enough for my need or not, I had my wife convinced the school principle to postpone the photoshoot till next Thursday, that way I got 1 week to get familiar with the strobe. After this gig I think I'm going to invest a bit more and get a second strobe (B400 or B800) along with photek softbox on a 13ft stand. The ceiling height of my house is only 9ft so I'm not sure how the tall light stand going to work out in such a tiny space.

excellent choice. i've found that i'm willing to spend more money on lighting then cameras haha. I'm shooting with a d200 camera and a 50 1.8 lens and getting fantastic results, however my lighting equipment runs north of 5000 dollars.

Lighting is everything. I've got some amazing results with just one mono light (such as the ab400, and a reflector on the other side of the person with a gray seamless paper backdrop. The shots looked great, simple and did what they needed too.

I just received the kits and took a few shots, still got some learning to do but so far i like the B400, but man...the background-in-a-bag doesn't give a pleasant result, is there anything I can do about it or should I return it and get something else?


I can't get the photek softlifter's sock to cover the strobe head either so for now I"m using the umbrella with it, the catch light from the bounce umbrella is very ugly, i guess i'll just have to get a softbox...

The best way to get the background to look better is to move the subject farther away from it, and shoot with a wider aperture (for less DoF).

Muslin b/gs are supposed to be wrinkled. You could try a steamer to relax some of the wrinkles. Or you can try stretching it over some kind of frame.

You also need to read Chuck Gardner's tutorials http://super.nova.org/DPR/

<Chas>

thanks...it works! had to moved the subject about 3.5ft away from the backdrop, change the position of the umbrella, and used wider aperture (f/4~f/5.6)

I managed to get the softliter diffuser sock over the strobe head, much better catch light and I think the light is a bit softer. For this shot i was using 1/250 @f/5.6 iso 100, 1/2 power on the strobe.

softliter in action