This past month has been an eye opening experience. I have already learned so much and done things I didn't think I was capable of. However, I now understand the importance of light and how elusive it can be. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for cheap lighting that you can use in your house. Right now all I am working with is a nikon sb600 speedlight and it certainly has it's limitations. If anyone has any do-it-yourself tips for lighting that work well and are inexpensive, I would love to hear it. Today (I will post the picture tomorrow when I edit) I was playing around and had sunlight, my flash and a lamp that was leaning against my table and I was still having trouble. Any tips to 'brighten' up my day?
I struggle with the same issue. Hving just bought my DSLR i havent the money for well... anything lol. Let alone proper lighting. Which leaves me to be much more... creative in my approach to lighting
I think personally the only real issue with "creative" lighting is that you have to be more adaptive with color corrections (ie Yellowish tints in your images that need to be fixed out)
I use 10$ paper lanterns from IKEA. The paper makes it into a nice Diffuse light.
And hang them up on w/e i can find to hang it on....
And most times a strip blacklight that ive had for ages that i got from Walmart
Though ive found that overcast days shooting outside gives the best and certainly the cheapest light source
I think people would be surprised just HOW much you can do with such unexpected objects
even tho i was a little unhappy to do it this way at first, its been a rather eye-opening experience for me and i think i will have a lot of knowledge from it when i finally can afford lights.
remember a diffuser is just a big cloth in a hola hoop, get one of those shop lights on a stand 500+watts... hang a cloth 2-3 fee in front of it... and you have great soft light...
or use the speed light to shoot through a large cloth... the size of the cloth determines how soft it will be...
check this website out. http://englephoto.com/moving-pictures/ This guy is great and the 5th video down has a news feature on some cheap lighting that you can get a Home Depot for real cheap. LED flashlights can be cheap and great too and you can use foam board for reflectors too. Sky's the limit.
@3nder - Learn to set the white balance on your camera. There should be presets for "Auto" "Incandescent", "Fluorescent", "Flash", etc.. The most valuable one for you will be "Preset" or "User" It allows you to take a picture of a known white (or 18-20% grey) object, and tells the camera that "Despite the less-than-ideal lighting conditions, THIS is white."
You can buy specially calibrated cards that are either pure white, or a certain percent grey (usually around 20%) to use for this. From what I understand, the slight grey is the 'standard' to use, but in a pinch, a blank white sheet of printer paper will do. Try it - take a picture in your living room on "Auto" white balance, and then do the preset using a sheet of paper, and re-take the picture. The difference in color will blow you away.
The best thing you can do is buy one or two small reflectors. These reflectors can bounce light from strobes or windows to provide you with more light than before. These are really good: http://www.adorama.com/FPPRT24.html
However, if you want homemade, cheap, and simple, go to Walmart or Target and pick up some foam core poster board. I have a TON of these things in every color and several in white. The photo of the strawberry falling in a glass of water I posted a few days ago was actually shot using a blue foam core poster board and two white ones. Very useful for only a couple bucks a piece.
Even though I have one of those 5-in-1 reflectors I use foam core sheets the most ... tape 2 together along one edge so they stand up by themselves and form sort of a v-shape. Use white sheets to reflect and black to flag/block the light. Michael's also has silver and gold reflective card/paper that can be cut up into whatever size you need. Don't forget to visit the kitchen drawer for a roll of good old aluminum foil ... crumple it up and then smooth it out to give a textured surface that will bounce light a little more randomly.
If you use shop lights (or any other continuous light source) watch the heat they generate ... some of them can get mighty toasty ... and don't put them too close to any difusion material (fire hazzard).
I have a daylight craft lamp that I like and another user bought some builders lights which she seems to get a good result from (Katie Rose Allan, I think). There was a discussion about this yesterday or the day before, so it might be worth looking to see what answers they got.
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I think personally the only real issue with "creative" lighting is that you have to be more adaptive with color corrections (ie Yellowish tints in your images that need to be fixed out)
I use 10$ paper lanterns from IKEA. The paper makes it into a nice Diffuse light.
And hang them up on w/e i can find to hang it on....
And most times a strip blacklight that ive had for ages that i got from Walmart
Though ive found that overcast days shooting outside gives the best and certainly the cheapest light source
I think people would be surprised just HOW much you can do with such unexpected objects
even tho i was a little unhappy to do it this way at first, its been a rather eye-opening experience for me and i think i will have a lot of knowledge from it when i finally can afford lights.
or use the speed light to shoot through a large cloth... the size of the cloth determines how soft it will be...
You can buy specially calibrated cards that are either pure white, or a certain percent grey (usually around 20%) to use for this. From what I understand, the slight grey is the 'standard' to use, but in a pinch, a blank white sheet of printer paper will do. Try it - take a picture in your living room on "Auto" white balance, and then do the preset using a sheet of paper, and re-take the picture. The difference in color will blow you away.
However, if you want homemade, cheap, and simple, go to Walmart or Target and pick up some foam core poster board. I have a TON of these things in every color and several in white. The photo of the strawberry falling in a glass of water I posted a few days ago was actually shot using a blue foam core poster board and two white ones. Very useful for only a couple bucks a piece.
If you use shop lights (or any other continuous light source) watch the heat they generate ... some of them can get mighty toasty ... and don't put them too close to any difusion material (fire hazzard).
Most of the time using Auto or Tungsten presets worked ok, but i imagine this will help fix the times when it just doesnt..
Thank you all for your suggestions. I will most certainly be taking a trip to home depot in the next day or 2. I'll let you know how it works out!! Really, thank you for taking the time out to help.