Hi, we're Chelsea and Tony and today we'll be showing you our photo studio.
We're going to take you through the gear that we use including our tethering
station, our tripods, our backdrops, our lighting, even light modifiers,
so stay tuned. First thing i'll go over is our camera gear that we keep in the
studio. We use the Canon 5dsr, it's got 50 mega pixels and our favorite studio
lens which is the canon 70-200. And all of that is on a Manfrotto ball head and
tripod.
We have a Dell 4k monitor, which is really nice for seeing your pictures pop up.
It's all on this rolling cart but Tony went over all of this stuff and how to
hook up tethering in our tethering video, so you can check that out in the link below.
Next we'll take a look at our lighting but first i want to show you the Paul C.
Buff cyber commander.
It's really nice because it can control up to 16 lights and it can even store
your lighting settings. So if you have complex lighting setups,
you can put the different variables in here and it will keep them for you.
This is the Einstein E640.
This is our our main strobe and we have like a mishmash of different strobes
that we use in here because I'm just kind of a cheapskate. In fact, I bought
all these used. This is the most expensive light we have, it's why we have it as the main
light. They run about 500 bucks new, I think. This strobe has an advantage in
that it's very fast. So it can,
it fires it and freezes the action. The rest of these strobes aren't quite as fast,
so the flash duration goes on a little bit more
and they might show motion, which could reduce sharpness. But because it's our
main light, we're pretty much taking advantage of it. It also has very good color
balance, so the color balance doesn't shift between strobes flashes.
Which can happen with cheaper lights. We have a beauty dish attached to
it, yea, with a sock.
Yeah this on the outside is a sock, it's a diffuser. We'll show the the
beauty dish from another angle, but we really like the effect of
the beauty dish. It creates, not necessarily completely soft light, it
still retains shadows which helps to show shadows under the cheekbones and
can just be a really flattering look. You'll notice that I have a piece of
sticky paper here with the number one
written on it. All the lights have numbers on them that allows me to more easily adjust
them up or down from the cyber commander because that can get confusing. And I
think it's important to mention that this c-stand has kind of been a life
saver for us. Right, that's actually our fourth C-stand and because the first
three just broke over time as you can imagine having all this weight out on an
arm like this,
eventually will just wear stuff down. So over the years- also the light will just lower
sometimes if you get a cheap one.
So this has been a really good one. -the whole thing will twist. This is an Avenger. And another helpful
thing is this circular sandbag here. Right.
That's The Vest Guy. This is one of my favorite ones, it's really nice and
heavy, it keeps everything in place. So yeah you'll notice all our stuff is sandbagged,
and that's for a reason. That's something you learn the hard way, because at first
you get a cheap light stand kit and you don't put sandbags on them but then you
have somebody in the studio and they trip over it and knock the whole light
over and then you break a bulb and then the bulb is 80 bucks. And, just the sand
bags are cheaper. But don't fill them with sand, fill them with gravel.
Otherwise the sand sneaks out sometimes- the sand get's everywhere! -and will actually wear down
your floors. An expensive C-stand is really important. Do not buy a cheap boom
or you will be buying several. Yeah, so that's not very, like, sexy but that's
pretty important. That has been a lesson that we've learned the hard way.
Yeah, while we're on the topic most of our light stands have casters on them i
just haven't found casters that fit this particular C-stand yet, but the
casters just make everything go a little bits faster because you can just
roll them from place to place. So, sandbag plus casters gives you mobility and
stability at the same time.
This light is a Paul C. Buff light too. The White Lightning X series
yeah - 1600. It's a little bit older,
it's a big heavy and durable light it's very powerful, it puts out a lot of light.
It doesn't have all the fancy features of this one, but it's cheaper so we use
this as a fill light and in a traditional portrait set up. A big soft box on there.
Yeah, it never hurts to have a big soft box because it's very easy to move it
away a little bit farther if you want harder light, so. I like this Octobobox,
it's not as easy to mount and dismount as a beauty dish but it unfolds pretty quickly
when you do need to travel. Our other lights back here, we have three Alien Bees
actually, and those are also Paul C. Buff lights. We got a lot of Paul C. Buff
lights.
Yeah, I picked these all up used from ebay, hence it's the varying colors. But I
think I spent no more than like two hundred bucks on them.
You'll be wondering whether you should get the B400s or the B
1800s, or the B 1600s, but -I think those are B800s.
This is a B800, that one's a B800 and I think there's a B400, but yeah,
generally all those outputs are just fine. The higher outputs are a little bit
better in that you can recycle the flash a little bit faster, but for the
most part, for the backdrop light, for the hair light, you don't need that much
power.
Even for these, we just don't need that much power. You need power for filling up
an auditorium, if you're shooting
somebody's wedding or a basketball game, you need to fill the whole room, but in
the studio, power doesn't matter that much.
Also notice with these Alien Bees, you have to connect an external device to
control it and these CyberSync controllers cost a few bucks more, so at
some point the Einsteins are almost as cheap as these because the Einsteins
have a less expensive remote control. So just something to consider if you're
weighing it, but we have a whole video about choosing the specific of the
lights. Here we have some nice barn doors as a light modifier, you can just move it
like
to keep the light from spilling onto your back drop or wherever. It just helps you
direct the light. And this has inserts here so you can drop a gel in there if
you want to make the the light yellow orange or red or blue or something.
Sometimes you want to start with a white backdrop and just color it that way.
We pulled out all sorts of junk for you guys.
These are some backdrops that are, they're thick, they have a a black rubber back
and then they have a design printed on them.
I really love these they don't wrinkle, they're super durable and they make
great floor in a photo shoot or you can use them as a backdrop.
Yeah they they actually look completely believable in a picture and
it's a lot cheaper than getting a nice wood wall and painting it and letting at age
for10 years.
Yes. You can throw a baby on there just get an instant- you can throw a baby?
Don't throw babies. But it's a good backdrop for a baby. I've used it for product photography
a lot
so I really love these. And then we have our vinyl backdrops as well and we
have white, black, vinyl and also a paper green-screen. Yeah, and to adjust these we
have
yeah these pulleys and it just allows it to more easily drop it down or raise it
back up out of the way. And you'll notice that I have a ladder that I keep back
here because every now and then the pulleys will slide off or we'll need to
change a backdrop or something. Yeah, those aren't favorite actually, those pulleys.
Yeah, they don't
work that great. We have a ton of stuff back
stuck behind these for backdrops like doors, and there's some wavy plastic here.
So we just kind of make backdrops too and then try to shove them back there.
Oh yeah, we have this guest back here.
A mannequin. Um, excuse me miss this will often- what are you doing to her?
We'll pull her out before a portrait shoot and set her up so that we can get the
lighting straight before the client shows up.
Poor thing. We have a few heigh modifying tools here too, we have the apple boxes,
which I often have to stand on to be as tall as our clients, if they're men.
Otherwise I'm just shooting up at them -yeah you'll show like a double chin
if you shoot from underneath, so you usually want to be slightly above eye
level.
Another thing that I do, I have several stools of different heights here and
those are great too because often your client will need to sit down.
Yeah we have a traditional stool, and then we have a more masculine stool.
It's good for group shots too, because you need to have you know kids and adults at
kind of the same height to fit everybody in the frame. So you want,
sometimes you have people standing on here, sometimes you'll have people
sitting on a stool and you just need lots of options so you can raise and lower
everybody to get about the same level and cram everyone in
the frame. Yeah, one thing I like about a stool is if you set up the light and
your subject can't move
then that's a good way, it's a good marker, or sometimes we just use tape on
the floor - yeah we'll put tape on the floor but yeah,
the average portrait client moves around. -I wriggle a lot, so I like the stool.
We have all sorts of kind of unconventional props. We have smoke bombs
and various blankets and christmas baubles and things like that, but one
thing i really like in the studio is this fog machine. And it's made by... Chauvet
I guess.
And it's just a good way to add some ambiance and get lighting going through
the fog.
It's cool, it's interesting. Another important part of the studio is having
your second camera body ready just in case something happens while you're
shooting.
So here i have a Mark III. Could be anything, anything you like.
This is just a big monster fan that we can use to add a little movement to hair
or sometimes just cool the room down.
It's just a regular fan, Lasko. So that's just a few of the cool toys that we have
in our studio. If you want more detailed information about building a photography
studio, check out my Photography Buying Guide, which is a ton of information. You can
also look for a lot of information at northrup.photo and please subscribe
to see more free videos. We put out of three new videos every week.
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