Loading
The list
Somebody who books the room and somebody who works in it want completely different mail from a studio. Tell us which you are and we will only send the half that is any use to you.
Lighting
Three things worth knowing before you book: which kind of light your shoot needs, what a modifier does to it, and how both behave in this particular room. Every head named below is one that is already here and included in the price.
This is the first fork and most of the rest follows from it. Flash is a burst lasting a fraction of a second. Continuous light is simply on. The studio has both, so the question is which one your shoot needs rather than which one we happen to own.
Stills, with nothing moving quickly: flash. Video, or anything you want to watch while you light it: continuous.
If the day is both — a product shoot with a few reels at the end of it — the Godox FV150 does both jobs. It runs as an LED and it fires as a flash, so the stand does not have to be rebuilt halfway through the afternoon.
A modifier is not a brightness control. It changes the size and the shape of the source, and size is what decides whether a shadow has a hard edge or a soft one.
A bare head is a small source, and small sources throw shadows with sharp edges: the line across a cheek or along the side of a bottle arrives abruptly, and every bit of texture is exaggerated. Put a softbox on that same head and the light now leaves a surface the size of the box rather than the size of a bulb, so it wraps around what it hits and the edge of the shadow turns gradual.
What matters is not the size of the box on its own but how large it looks from where the subject is standing. A 120cm octa a metre away is an enormous source and very soft indeed. Pull the same octa back four metres and it is a small source again, nearly as hard as the bare head was. So the fastest way to change the quality of your light is to move it, not to swap it.
Shape is the other half. A long, narrow box lays a long, narrow highlight down the side of a bottle or a shoulder; a round one leaves a round catchlight in an eye. Neither is more correct than the other — they draw different edges, and which edge you want is the decision.
Big, round and soft. The usual key light for a person: a round catchlight in the eye and a gentle fall-off across a face.
The workhorse. Controlled enough for product, large enough for a half-length portrait, and there are two of them so one can be key and the other fill.
Long and narrow. Stand one down each side of a bottle for the two bright edges that give it its shape, or put one behind a subject as a rim that lifts them off the backdrop.
Modifiers, stands, triggers and the rest are part of the room price. There is no separate kit list adding up in the background.
Seven by three metres of shooting floor, and a 4 × 3 metre cyclorama — a curved corner with no line where the wall meets the floor.
The cyclorama is what you are paying for when you want a background with nothing in it. Because there is no corner there is no shadow line to retouch away, and somebody can stand on the same white they are photographed against. But the wall only reads as white if you light it as a subject in its own right: a head aimed at the person will leave the wall a grey, and no single exposure fixes both at once.
Distance is the other half of the room. Bring somebody close to the cyclorama and the light spilling off them bounces back off it — useful for a bright, airy look, unhelpful if you wanted a dark edge down their arm. Pull them two or three metres forward and the wall falls darker on its own, without touching a light.
A starting point that works for most people: the key through the octa at about forty-five degrees to one side and a little above eye level, a strip box behind and to the other side as a rim, and the second SK400II pointed at the cyclorama to lift it to white. Then shoot it, look at it, and move one light at a time — a setup you changed in two places at once teaches you nothing about either.
Not sure which one you need?
Tell us what you are shooting and we will say which lights will be on the stands before you arrive. If the answer is that you need something we do not own, we will say that too.