studio space problems with soft boxes

[Dan Dozer]

My wife and I are moving into a new house and she has graciously said that I can have two rooms for my photography work - one for my darkroom and one for a studio. This will work great for me and am really looking forward to setting things up. However, I'm having a challenge thinking about shooting portraits and figure work with the studio room space. It's plenty long enough but only 9' wide.

I'm used to working with large soft boxes on each side of my subject, and there clearly won't be enough width in the studio to work with them. Was wondering if I could utilize something like LED strip lights mounted on the two side walls for continuous lighting, but not sure if I will get enough light out of them.

Any suggestions on how to make this work. One idea i had is to get rectangular soft boxes which aren't as deep, but this still might not provide me with enough space. Are there any new products out there that would be smaller, but still work as well?

[LabRat]

The easiest compact solution is good old foam-core where these are cut to fit where you work and set-up where boxes would go, but without the heavy boom stand and big box... You would then use a smaller stand with reflectors on the heads to illuminate the cards and bounce the light off of them... You might be able to just hinge cards off the wall to save space...

You will need to carefully shade the lens as the lights will be closer to camera in the smaller space...

Steve K

[ghostcount]

Congrats on the new house and blessings from your wife in continuing her support for your photography.

Have you looked into wall mounted booms or a ceiling rails?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/546663-REG/Manfrotto_098B_098B_Wall_Mounting_Boom.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-YHOsrW66gIVBIzICh3aFQ49EAQYASABEgK_EfD_BwE

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/283924-REG/Manfrotto_FF3033_Pro_Studio_Rail_System.html/?ap=y&ap=y&smp=y&smp=y&lsft=BI%3A514&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-YHOsrW66gIVBIzICh3aFQ49EAQYBSABEgITCfD_BwE

[Mark Sawyer]

Beauty dishes are slightly more compact, if that helps. Or maybe just bounce the strobe off the wall? Not the same, but closer to a softbox than LED strips.

[Ari]

There are also some thin-profile soft box options. I used to use only Wafer soft boxes. They were - and still are - very expensive, but also top-quality. They're also half as deep as other pro soft boxes.
These days, I've abandoned soft boxes in favour of ring lights, or gridded reflectors, sometimes with a diffuser on the front.
But if you still prefer soft boxes, Adorama has a decent line of stuff for not too much money.

[Tin Can]

Start with wall booms and V-Cards

[Jim Michael]

Since a panel LED can be gridded that would appear to be a nice alternative, less need for flags etc. getting in the way.

[Kiwi7475]

I can’t really offer any advice but just wanted to say that I’d like to have this “problem” too :-)

[Peter De Smidt]

Bounce light. Use black v-flats or fabric as subtractive fill if needed.

https://theportraitmasters.com/product/shooting-small-places/

[Mark Sampson]

Can you share a photo of the raw space? It would help us better visualize the situation... although you have some good ideas already.
I've seen good work done in very small studios (and I've shot in a couple).

[Mark Sawyer]

Recent cutting-edge cosmological research indicates it is a theoretical impossibility to build a "big enough" studio within the confines of this physical universe.

[Dan Dozer]

Can you share a photo of the raw space? It would help us better visualize the situation... although you have some good ideas already.
I've seen good work done in very small studios (and I've shot in a couple).

Here is the room I have to work with. It's 9' wide x 18' long.

205632

[Dugan]

The couch is gonna have to go. :)

[LabRat]

The couch is gonna have to go. :)

What!?!!! "Fainting" couches were big in Victorian photography... ;-)

Steve K

[Peter De Smidt]

It looks like it'll work fine. My last studio was a bit smaller, and it didn't have any windows.

[Drew Wiley]

You have plenty of space, although I envy you because my wife took away two rooms! I still have a serious darkroom setup in another building, but no more studio or display space. Tracks on the ceiling for movable things, sliding panels on wall, etc. My habit when trying to figure out the most efficient allocation of space is to get some gridded paper and start drawing in options. I used quick to set up and dismantle diffusers and fabric stands made of PVC pipe fittings, and suspended a round pipe from hooks in the ceiling for sake of big background paper rolls. I had a young couple on the way over for their portrait when the cat found the lower end of the roll just above the floor. As I was answering the doorbell, the cat was rapidly unrolling the background paper from above and spinning around a tunnel of it on the floor, then went wild shredding it from the inside of this fun little tunnel, which amounted to about half the volume of the roll by then! So just as I escorted the clients into the studio, I saw paper confetti everywhere. The lesson of that is, cats aren't good studio equipment. Now they've taken over completely, and I'm just the butler.

[Pieter]

Kino-flos with diffusion, maybe. But bouncing off opposite walls or flats might be the simplest.

[giganova]

LED Litepanels?

[Pieter]

Here is the room I have to work with. It's 9' wide x 18' long.

205632

You're in California. Open the window and shoot from outside. You should have plenty of room on the sides for your lighting. I'm not kidding here. I have a workspace (I dare not call it a studio) that is 1/2 of a 2-car garage. I regularly shoot from outside, even light from outside through the windows if there is not enough natural light.

[Drew Wiley]

I don't know exactly where he lives, but here where I happen to live in California, opening the window right now would let a lot of wildfire smoke and haze in. At least there would be no need for a Harrison & Harrison amber filter if one wanted that Godfather movie look with color film.

[LabRat]

I don't know exactly where he lives, but here where I happen to live in California, opening the window right now would let a lot of wildfire smoke and haze in. At least there would be no need for a Harrison & Harrison amber filter if one wanted that Godfather movie look with color film.

Adds new meaning to the term "warming filter"... ;-)

Steve K

[Neal Chaves]

Spot/Flood Fresnels like the 10" DeSisti and Quartz Color Castor are available for about 1-2% of original cost that you might consider converting some to electronic flash. They throw a unique and beautiful light and are far more efficient than soft boxes. They can be raised close to the ceiling and still be above the subject in a room with 8' ceilings. I have engineered conversions for Dynalite and Norman, and I think some of the Godox stuff will go right in. I will be posting conversion details soon, or you can PM me in the meantime. The Castor shown here, which has been converted to Norman can be bought for less than $40 on eBay.206980206981

[Peter De Smidt]

Back when I did commercial work, we'd often mount huge sheets of diffusion materials over windows to create a huge bank of soft light. (Each of the photographers for the studio had two 8x16 foot diffusion "silks".) If needed, we would add flash on the outside.

[Drew Wiley]

I used Arri focusing frenels, a bit of Lowell lighting, and portable diffusers in a limited space. The nice thing about direct lighting is that what you see, you get. The bad thing about hot lights is that they are hot. So I'd use a stand-in model (often my wife) to arrange the lighting, so that the clients themselves wouldn't have to endure that.

[Mark Sampson]

That's a nice-looking room. With your light-colored walls and low ceiling there's going to be a lot of reflected light bouncing around... which can provide some natural fill light. Your lighting answers may be simpler than you think!

[HMG]

Spot/Flood Fresnels like the 10" DeSisti and Quartz Color Castor are available for about 1-2% of original cost that you might consider converting some to electronic flash. They throw a unique and beautiful light and are far more efficient than soft boxes. They can be raised close to the ceiling and still be above the subject in a room with 8' ceilings. I have engineered conversions for Dynalite and Norman, and I think some of the Godox stuff will go right in. I will be posting conversion details soon, or you can PM me in the meantime. The Castor shown here, which has been converted to Norman can be bought for less than $40 on eBay.206980206981


Would this generate a lot of heat in a small room?

[Bob Salomon]

Would this generate a lot of heat in a small room?

If they use hot light they will generate lots of heat, also use lots of amperage.
Most importantly they will generate a much harsher shadow then a soft box. Unless you can mount them a long way from the subject.

[MAubrey]

The Falcon Eyes RX series are nice and small with plenty of output.

[MCarter]

The Falcon Eyes RX series are nice and small with plenty of output.

While the RX18T will be my next lighting purchase, it'll be for video, not stills. The output doesn't seem to be there for shooting large format.

My main LED light has been the Lightstorm LS1S panel ($700), with an output of 10,500 Lux at 1m. In a medium softbox with only the front diffusion, I can light a head & shoulders portrait at about F4 at 400 ISO; adding a grid drops it lower. The Falcon Eyes panels are bi-color, so their rated output is with all LEDs on 100%, so not sure what temp they're at with their fullest output. The new RX24TDX (150w, about $600) is 3790 Lux at 1m; the 18T is 2470 Lux at 1m; I assume those specs are without diffusion.

They do seem to be fantastic lights and the kits with softboxes and grids and space lights seem to give fantastic utility - my main interest is that it's a hassle to stuff the LightStorm into a softbox for interviews, the RX stuff seems like it would speed things up for me. Though if you own an RX light, I'd love to hear some real-world numbers, what kind of f-stop/ISO combo's it's capable of at varying distances with diffusion vs. trusting manufacturer's Lux claims - IE, I'd love to find out I'm very wrong!

Once lockdown eases off I expect a lot of catch-up video shooting, at that point I'll get a Falcon Eyes panel myself.

[Neal Chaves]

Would this generate a lot of heat in a small room?

With the original 2Kw quartz bulbs they got very hot, so hot that the paint burned right off the top and insides of many of them. With electronic flash and a 250w bulb they don't even get warm. I have converted them to a standard Edison screw socket, and with a 500W photo flood bulb, you can still touch the top.

[Neal Chaves]

Here are some recent tests of the output of flash Fresnels. These were high power tests with wet and dry plate use in mind. For studio use at 100 ISO, we have only required 200Ws to 400Ws with diffusion and polarizer at stops of f8 to f11.
https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?154768-Measured-output-of-flash-Fresnel-lights