January 2012

A lot of people are turning photography into their personal hobbies these days. The photography hype has hit a lot of yuppies or young professionals because perhaps of the many social networking sites that promote photo sharing with friends and simply because of the many ways of which to showcase ones photography or art through the World Wide Web. Thus, a lot has turned into buying their professional cameras as well as photography equipment to make their own photo studio at home. So here, you will learn the basic photography equipment needed in a photo studio of your own.

Note: If you want to setup a professional studio, skip this section and read the next. 

When creating your own photo studio, keep in mind the basic components of such a room. You’ll need the basic photography equipment such as the camera, the film if you are not using a digital camera, the lights, props, and of course materials for the background. Let’s look at the details for each of these components one by one.

1. Let’s start with the camera. It all depends on what kind of quality you want to get out of the camera. You can get a manual camera with at least a good 35mm. This will allow you to set your exposure easily. On the other hand, you may opt for a digital camera too. Now what you are probably wondering right now is what resolution and pixels to get? The answer depends on you. What are you going to do with the photo? Are you printing a 3R or 4R picture? Or are you printing a poster? If you’re not planning to print a billboard sign that has to have high quality settings, then you don’t need the highest resolution and pixels available in the market today. If you are printing only the size of a long bond paper at the most, then most of the digital cameras below a thousand dollars can do the trick.

2. Of course, if you are using a manual camera, you will also need film. To get the natural skin tone and proper contrast in colors, you may opt for either the Fuji NPS film or the Kodak Portra NC.

3. Now let’s go over to the background. A photography studio won’t be complete with this. It greatly affects the subject by either complimenting or detracting from it. If you don’t know what background to use, a simple plain background will do. You’ll need a background stand and a seamless paper to go with it. The most common colors that photographers use are white, gray, black, and blue. Now if you’ve been to a photography studio, you’ve probably seen the dyed backgrounds. Those are called muslins and can be draped because of its lightweight material.

4. The lights are very important photography equipment. You can’t do without one. Remember, photography is all about lighting. To create your own photography studio, you’ll need at least your fill light and a main light. The use of umbrellas gives it a nice and soft quality. You can also use a third light at the back to get rid of the shadows. For more advance photography, you can add a fourth light that serves the purpose of a hair light.

Equipment To Setup a Professional Studio

Are you ready to take photography to the next level? Are you ready to take photography as your career? Are you ready to set up your own photography studio? If so, one of the things you have to prepare is your photography studio lighting equipment. Without the correct lighting, your skills won’t matter. One can say that lighting is the most important aspect of photography. After all, photography is the capture or light and its reflection. The proper lighting holds a very important role to the success of your photos or shots. So continue reading below to learn more about setting up photography studio lighting equipment on your own.

In reality, photography lighting equipment is so important not only in the studio but on location or outdoors too. It is so essential to photography. If you have already witnessed a photo shoot, you might have noticed how many lighting equipment is used just to take a photo of one model. That’s how important lighting equipments are. But it’s not just your usual light. Let’s take a look at the various times of lighting equipment you can use.

Some of the most popular photography studio lighting equipment used today includes tungsten, AC- and DC-powered strobes or studio lights, battery-powered location strobes, daylight-balanced fluorescents, HMI and LED lights. Each of these types of lights is suited for various types of applications. That’s why you should be able to choose the lights that you will need. So let’s take a look at some of the types of lighting equipment available.

1. If you are considering getting studio strobes, know that they are instantaneous, heat-free, and bright. It is perfect if you need to use a very minimum aperture setting in your camera. You’ll get a really sharp focus on your subject if you use this in you photography studio. Studio strobes can deliver instantaneous output. It can accommodate flash durations of about 1/15,000^th of a second. If you are taking shots of little kids, it would be the perfect lighting equipment to use. What’s even great about it is that it is generally cool unlike other lighting that heats up. Kids won’t sweat under this lighting.

2. Now let’s move on to the hot lights. The tungsten or the quartz halogen lights are used for stills and video. This allows you to add finesse to the direction and quality of lighting. It’s great lighting equipment for neophytes. They are lighter and less expensive than strobe lights. You will have more opportunity to study your subject and create a high quality photo with these.

BONUS – Upgrading Your Digital Camera Lens

One of the many ways to upgrade your digital camera is through digital camera lenses. While some digital SLR’s already have kits that include lenses with them, sometimes they may not be enough later on. If you constantly look for more digital photography techniques in your photos, and if you want your digital SLR do be able to do much more, then upgrading lenses or having multiple digital photography lenses will be needed. Here are a couple of tips on buying digital photography lenses.

Digital photography lenses are fundamental to good photography. There are so many types of lenses out there that will probably confuse you. Everyone who started from scratch knows this for a fact. Sometimes, without the right guidance, you end up buying what you really wanted just because you don’t know the different types of digital photography lenses and their main features or functionalities. There are the wide-angle lenses, the telephoto lenses, there are various focal lengths of lenses, and they have different speeds. Plus, there are so many brands out there. So how do you know which one is for you? It is quite overwhelming to hear the many types of lenses in the market today. So this little help will surely take you a long way.

1. Choose the focal length that you like. It is one of the most important factors, if not the most, that you should think about when buying your digital photography lens. It determines the field-of-view that you can successfully take with your digital SLR. There are two main types namely the wide-angle and the telephoto.

   1. Telephoto lenses – are great at taking portraits and close-ups.

   2. Wide-angle lenses – as the name implies, they are wider and great for landscapes and indoor photography such as taking a photo of a room.

2. Speed is also important. The terms slow and fast lenses refer to the maximum aperture of the lens. This is the maximum amount of light that a lens lets in. So the fast lens is the type of lens that allows more light and the slow lens is the opposite. The speed helps in defining the results of your shots. The f/stop numbers are the measurements referring to the maximum aperture. This is the ratio of the size of the aperture and the focal length. More light gets in when the f/stop number is smaller. So in this case, the f/2.0 lets in lesser light than an f/1.4. Just remember, for darker lighting conditions, you are better off with fast lenses. If you have a well lighted subject, then you may opt for the slower lenses.

3. Zoom lens is not your fixed-focal-length lens. This is great if you need to take different shots where you have to zoom in and out. However, the problem with zoom lenses is that they don’t have a consistent maximum aperture. But there are some which are really larger and more expensive.

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